"Then you thought wrong." He walked to a metal ash-tray which helped to keep the covering that protected one of the low bookcases in its place, and deposited the burnt match. He threw off with seeming carelessness as he did so, "I know only one traitor, to make me keep returning on my tracks."

Because the impulse to violence was so terrific, Thor braced himself against it, standing with his feet planted apart and his hands clenched behind him till the nails dug into the flesh. He could not, however, restrain a scornful little grunt which was meant for laughter. "_You_ talk of traitors! I'd keep quiet about them, Claude, if I were you. You make it too easy for an opponent."

"Oh, well," Claude returned, airily, "I'm used to doing that. I made it infernally easy for an opponent--last winter. But, then, sneaking's always easy to a snake, till you get your heel on him."

"And snarling's easy to a puppy, till you've throttled him."

"And bl.u.s.ter's easy to a fool, till you let him see you hold him in contempt."

"As to holding in contempt, two can play at that game, Claude; and you might find the compet.i.tion dangerous."

Claude came nearer, the lighted cigarette between his fingers. "Not on your life! That's one thing in which I'm not afraid to bet on myself."

He came nearer still, planting himself within a few paces of his brother. His smile, his mirthless, dead-man's smile, held Thor's eyes as it had held Lois's a day or two before. He made an effort to speak jauntily. "Why, Thor, a volcano can't belch fire as fast as I can spit contempt on you. There! Take that!"

With a rapid twist of the hand he threw the lighted cigarette into Thor's face, where it struck with a little smarting burn below the eye.

Thor held himself in check by clenching his fists more tightly and standing with bowed head. It was a minute or more before he was sufficiently master of himself to loosen the grip with which his fingers dug into one another, and put up his hand to brush the spot of ash from his cheek. Being in so great fear of his pa.s.sions, he felt the necessity for speaking peaceably.

"What did you do that for, Claude? It's beastly silly."

"Oh no, it isn't--not the way I mean it."

"But why should you mean it that way? What have I ever done to you?"

"Good Lord! what haven't you done? You've--you've ruined me."

The charge was so unexpected that Thor looked more amazed than indignant. "Ruined you?"

"Yes, ruined me. What else did you set out to do when you began your confounded interference?"

"I didn't mean to interfere--"

Claude might have posed for some symbolical figure of accusation as, with hands in his trousers pockets and cla.s.sic profile turned in a three-quarter light, he flung his words and directed his glances obliquely and disdainfully at the brother who glowered with bent head.

"When you don't mean to go into a thing you keep out. That was your place--out. Do you get that?--_out_. But you're never satisfied till you've made as vile a mess of every one else's affairs as you've made of your own."

Feeling some justice in the charge, Thor began to excuse himself. "If I've made a mess of my own, Claude, it's because--"

"Because you can't help it. Oh, I know that. No one can be anything but a d.a.m.n fool if he's born one. All the more reason, then, why you should keep away from where you're not wanted."

By a great effort Thor managed to speak meekly. "How could I keep away when--?"

"When you're a rubber-neck bred in the bone. No, I suppose you couldn't.

But you hate a spy and a liar even when he can't be anything else; and the worst of it is--"

"Oh, is there anything worse than that?"

"There's this that's worse, that your spying and your lying weren't bad enough till you got me into a fix where I have to look like a cad, when"--the protest in his soul against the role he was compelled to play expressed itself in a little gasp--"when I'm--when I'm not one."

The elder brother found himself unable to resist the opportunity. "If you look like a cad, I suppose it's because you've acted like a cad.

It's the usual reason."

"Oh, there's cad and cad. There's a fellow who gets snarled up in the barbed wire because he runs into it, and there's another who deliberately lays the trap for him. The one can afford to crawl away with a grin on his face, while the other lies scratched and bleeding."

It seemed to Thor that there was an opening here for a timorous attempt to cry quits. "If it comes to the question of suffering, Claude, it isn't all on one side. You may be scratched and bleeding, as you say, and yet you can get over it; whereas I'm lamed for life."

"Ah, don't come the hypocrite! If you're lamed for life, as I hope to G.o.d you are, it's because you've got a bullet in the leg--which is what any one hands out to a poacher."

The relatively gentle tone was again the effect of a surprise stimulated to curiosity. "When was I ever a poacher?"

"You were a poacher when you went making love to a woman who belonged to another man, while you belonged to another woman."

"Very well," Thor said, quietly, after a minute's thinking. "I accept the explanation. But I never did it."

"Then you did something so infernally like it that to deny it is mere quibbling with words."

"All the same, I insist on making the denial."

Claude shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not surprised at that. It's exactly what your type of cur would do. Unfortunately for you, I've the proof."

"The proof of what?"

"Of your torturing a poor girl into saying she was willing to marry you--and then throwing the words in her teeth."

It was from the flame in Thor's eyes that Claude leaped back a half-pace, though he steadied himself against a small table covered up from the acc.u.mulation of summer's dust by a piece of common calico.

Giving himself time enough to have deliberately counted twenty, Thor subdued the impulse of the muscles as well as that of speech. "Who told you that?" he asked, at last, in the tone he might have used of some matter of no importance.

"Who do you think?"

"There's only one person who _could_ have told you--"

"Oh, you admit as much as that, do you? There is a person who could have told me?"

"Yes, I admit as much as that--but you must have misunderstood her."

Thor's dignity and self-restraint were not without an effect that might eventually have made for peace had not the brother's conscience been screaming for a scapegoat on which to lay a portion of his sins. For him alone the entire weight had become intolerable. Thor had been known to accept such vicarious burdens before now. In the hope that he would do so again, Claude answered, tauntingly:

"I didn't misunderstand her when she said you were making me a cat's-paw to do what you wouldn't do yourself. What kind of stuff are you made of, Thor? You go flaunting your money before a poor little girl who you know can't resist it, and then, when you get her willing to do G.o.d knows what, you push her off on me and want to pay me for the job of relieving you of your dirty work. After you've dragged her in the dust she's still considered good enough for me--"

"Stop!"

The roar of the monosyllable echoed through the empty house, while Thor strode forward, the devil in him loose. With the skill of a toreador in throwing his cloak into the eyes of an infuriated bull, Claude s.n.a.t.c.hed the calico strip from the table beside which he stood and flung it in Thor's face. The result was to check the latter in his advance, giving Claude time to dart nimbly to the other side of the room. As Thor stared about him, dazed by his rage, he bore out still further the resemblance to a maddened animal in the bull-ring.

Fear struggled in Claude's heart with the l.u.s.t for retaliation. Like Thor himself, he knew the minute to be one in which he could work off a thousand unpaid scores that had been heaping themselves up since childhood. For the time being it seemed as if he could not only make the scapegoat bear his sins, but stab him to the heart while he did it.

"Stop?" he laughed, shrilly. "Like h.e.l.l, I'll stop. Did you stop when you went sneaking after Rosie Fay till you got her in a state where she wanted to kill herself?" The red glare in Thor's eyes was an incentive to going on. "Did you stop when you tried to father your beastly actions off on me, and juggle me into marrying the girl you'd had enough of? Did you stop when you fooled Lois Willoughby into thinking you a saint, and breaking her heart when she found you out? Look at her now--"

With a smothered oath Thor charged as a wounded rhinoceros might charge--in a lunge that would have borne his brother down by sheer force of weight had not Claude eluded him lightly. Once more Thor shook himself, stupefied by his pa.s.sion, blinded by the blood in his eyes. He needed an instant to place his victim, who, with white face and wild, terrified glances, had found temporary shelter behind the barricade of the heavy library table.

But before renewing his rush Thor marched to the door that led to the hall, the only door to the room, locking it and pocketing the key. The muttered, "By G.o.d, I'll have you now!" reached Claude's ears, bringing to his lips a protest which had not burst into words before the huge figure charged again. Behind his fortification Claude was alert, dancing now this way and now that, as Thor brought his strength to bear on the table to wrench it aside. But by the time that was done Claude was already elsewhere, overturning tables and chairs in his flight.