The Step In The House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 480, 9 October 1928, Page 5

The Step In The House

By

Rina Ramsay.

CHAPTER XI. — (Continued) "I know what it is,” he said viciously. “This will is a trumped-up business. The whole town knows you were head over ears in love with that little adventuress who turned up like a cuckoo in the nest and murdered the poor old man. You want to get hold of his money and spend it on her —the callous little cheat who choked him with her own hands: It’s enough to make her victim turn in his grave, I tell you!” “That will do,” said Richardson, and knocked him down. There was enough truth in what Johnny said to make him burn with the fury that consumes a man who hears his most precious secret shouted out on the house-tops. He could have contained himself, but Johnny’s vulgar abuse of her was too much for his self-control. He stood over him. “Get up,” he said. Johnny, remaining in a heap on the floor, blinked up at him, and showed no sign of collecting himself. "Get up, man!” he repeated. “If I do,” said Johnny, “you’ll hit mo again.” "I shall,” said Richardson, stripping off his coat. “Then I'll stop where I am,” said Johnny. "Where I’m safe. And where you’re safe, you Bull of Bashan! You're a great tough brute, twice my size, but if we got to scuffing in here, we’d precious soon smash up your stock in trade; and what with me having a smack at you, and the broken glass, you might not come off so lightly. There’d be a pretty scandal, you going about visiting your patients with a black eye. Even you would scarcely kick a man when he’s down. It’s not done. It would sound cowardly in a police court.” “No,” said Richardson, “I won’t kick you, but I’ll throw you out of my house.”

He picked him up, and carried him bodily out of the surgery. “Not in the street —not in the street!” yelled Johnny. Richardson hesitated half a second, and then had mercy, and, staggering toward the side doer, flung him into the garden. He sat up, dusty, dishevelled, but not awed. The streak of cunning in him prompted in him that impudence which would gall the enemy worse than any amount of vituperation—and safer, too. very much safer for him. He must not go too far again, though —must not lose his temper. The

thing was to keep cool, and not set the other man in a rage. These good-natured chaps, once you get them roused, were the very devil. He’d be ashamed of his outburst now; it was just the moment for him to weaken. So Johnny reasoned, sitting in the dust. What was a trifle of personal vanity compared to that priceless opportunity of gaining some concession while the other man was still off his balance? He could pay him out later on.

“Well, you’ve got me off your chest,” he said, forcing a laugh that was more like an hysterical cackle. “Feel more Christian now, don’t you, doctor? Don’t go in.” “Suppose you apologise, then,” said Richardson. There was no shame in him. The brute might have been accustomed to pitching respectable

solicitors out of liis house every day in the week. Still, Johnny endeavoured to trade on a possible remorse. After all, the British were the only nation who loved their enemies, loved them so dearly, too, when they got them beaten, that they made their friends suffer for it! And this infernal doctor was British to the backbone, and he had him beaten. Now was the time to get round him, and if once he got the promise the thing was done. He’d keep it, being the stubborn fool he was.

“Certainly,” he said, “I'm sorry— I’m literally begging pardon on my hands and knees. Look here, Richardson, like a good fellow, see if we can come to terms. It’s not like you to be mercenary—you’re not that sort. You’re not dealing with me—you’re dealing with a lady. If I’ve put the case too strongly, dragging other parties into it, it’s my fault, not hers. Just give me authority to tell her she need not worry about the future —you’ll see her through.” He didn’t rise. He was clever enough to see that if he got on his feet the other man could slam the

side door in his face and leave him. His one chance to get a hearing was to stay down where he was. He hoped the servants were not looking out of the back windows to behold him sprawling. Lord, what gossip—! He must reckon with that. “Why don’t you get up?” said Richardson. “You’re not hurt.” The doubt in his voice was enough. Johnny didn't. “I’ve got something broken, I think,” he said. “No, don’t touch me! What do I care if I get every bone in my body broken, trying to get justice? Only give me your promise, and I’ll get up and go away—if I can.” He felt one leg, that was doubled under him, and groaned. “I’ll be just,” said Richardson quietly, “I can promise you that. I’ll be just. I’ll hold no communication with you and your client except through my lawyers.” His quietness misled the man on the ground. Johnny righted himself a bit, to the worse damage of the geraniums. “Why not let me act for you, though?” he said. “I’m on the spot, and I have the whole of Harry Dodds’s affairs at my fingers’ ends. Why should you pay a gang of London fellows who know nothing about it run you into no end of unnecessary expense, and get everything in a muddle?” Yes, he thought. Richardson was precisely the sort of Quixotic idiot who’d do a thing like that out of pure compunction for his rough handling. Ljprd, how smart! The impudence of the proposal, after what had passed, took Richardson by surprise. He couldn’t speak for a moment. He looked down in silence from where he stood on his own threshold, at the man he had flung into the garden below.

“I don’t like you, and I don’t trust you,” he said plainly. “And I’ll have nothing to do with you.” The game was lost then; that game. Even Adams, in his conceit and his too clever deductions, saw it. He got up then, and dusted his trousers.

“Very good then,” he said viciously. “Then we’ll fight you. We’ll make you as much trouble as we can. I’ll let everyone in this place know what a greedy, ungenerous brute you are. You think you’re too darn popular to care about public opinion, don’t you? You’ll And yourself mistaken.” He spoke to a closed door. There was nothing for it but to make his way out by the side gate. He adjusted his tie and did so. There was a further offensive later on. Richardson smiled to himself, but grimly, when he heard that a lady had called to see him. “What lady?” he said. He was sitting in his study after dinner, and it was late for ladies to be calling on bachelors, anyhow. “Does she want a subscription?” She didn’t say. she only said it was important; she would not give

her name, said the housekeeper. "Very well,” said the doctor. “Put her in the other room. I’ll come.” The lady was large and fair and dressed beautifully in mourning. He had seen her once or twice in the distance, but had always hitherto managed to avoid an encounter. He had not wanted to know her. Curious, how different she was in every respect from the girl who had tangled herself so irretrievably in his heart. Blue eyes they both had, but that was an accident, and this one, in spite of the similarity in their reputed ages was, in appearance at any rate, more mature.

She had settled herself in the most advantageous position in his rather conventional drawing room he noticed she had many rings on her smooth white hands. She rose and held them both out to him with a pretty gesture “I’ve come to throw myself on your kindness.” she said. “I am in an awful position, doctor.” “Indeed,” he said. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know what is to become of me.” Still Richardson was stiff. His housekeeper had thriftily turned on the light that hung nearest to where the lady sat. It had a deep silken shade that cast a romantic shadow. He moved back to the door and snapped on the rest of the lights. The blinds were up at the that faced the street. He had always felt this was an ugly room—staring and unsatisfactory. Some day he would

change it. To-night, he thought whimsically, it must look like a theatre lit up for those who passed outside. The lady glanced at the three straight uncovered windows. “Isn’t this rather public?” she suggested. The doctor smiled. “I hope so,” he said. "I’m rather a public character, you see ” He wasn't going to have any simulated hysterics, and pumped-up tears of an artful woman. He had no intention of letting old Harry Dodds's pseudo-heiress starve, but he didn’t like her. “I don’t think I have the pleasure,” he said. “Please sit down.” She sat down again on the sofa. The doctor himself went and leaned against the chimney piece, a hideous thing of speckled marble, too solid monument of the taste of his predecessor’s wife. “No, we haven’t met,” she said. “I wish we had. It would have been so much easier if you and I had been friends before this happened. You know who I am, of course. You must have guessed already. I’m that unfortunate girl whose impulsive Journey over here to the home of her last surviving relative seems likely to leave her —homeless.” "You put it very touchingly,” said the doctor. He wasn’t moved. He l had never admired large women. | Standing there rigid, with his back | to the chimney piece, he summed her ; up. Calculating blue eyes, a surface : sweetness, the bland line of her face, \ contradicted by a bad mouth; and • something cruel, something very 1 selfish in the fingers of those well-

manicured hands. Her hands were her vanity, he could see, by the way she kept them self-consciously in view, and glanced at them when she folded them in her lap. “Because I—feel it so much,” she said. “You mustn’t think me an avaricious girl, if I say the discovery of this supposed will has been a terrible blow to me. It’s the feeling of being disowned, disinherited—you understand what I mean, I am sure you are sympathetic. I always think what such a repudiation of her child would have meant to my poor mother, if she had lived to know it. She was so sure he would relent when he saw her girl.” (To be Continued)