e been glad to end it
all with one shot of the silver-mounted automatic he kept always near, to
beat Jim Roberts to the bliss of oblivion in the easiest way.

But Alan Massey had an incorrigible belief in his luck. Just as he had
hoped, until he had all but believed, that his cousin John was as dead as
he had told that very person he was, so now he hoped against all reason
that he would be saved at the eleventh hour, that Roberts would go to his
death carrying with him the secret that would destroy himself if it
ceased to be a secret.

Those unmailed letters haunted him, however, day and night, so much so,
in fact, that he took a journey to Boston one day and sought out the
little cigar store again. But this time he had not mounted the stairs.
His business was with the black-eyed boy. With one fifty dollar bill he
bought the lad's promise to destroy the letters and the packet in
Robert's drawer in the event of the latter's death; secured also the
promise that if at any time before his death Roberts gave orders that
either letter should be mailed, the boy would send the same not to the
address on the envelope but to Alan Massey. If the boy kept faith with
his pledges there would be another fifty coming to him after the death of
the man. He bought the lad even as Roberts had once bought himself. It
was a sickening transaction but it relieved his mind considerably and
catered in a measure to that incorrigible hope within him.

But he paid a price too. Fifty miles away from Boston was Tony Holiday on
her Heaven kissing hill. He was mad to go to her but dared not, lest this
fresh corruption in some way betray itself to her clear gaze.

So he went back to New York without seeing her and Tony never knew he had
been so near.

And that night Jim Roberts took an unexpected turn for the worse and
died, foiled of that last highly anticipated spice of malice in flipping
the coin that was to decide Alan Massey's fate.

In the end the boy had not had the courage to destroy the letters as he
had promised to do. Instead he sent them both, together with the packet
of evidence as to John Massey's identity, to Alan Massey.

The thing was in Alan's own hands at last. Nothing could save or destroy
him but himself. And by a paradox his salvation depended upon his being
strong enough to bring himself to ruin.

CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH PHIL GETS HIS EYES OPENED

At home on her Hill Tony Holiday settled down more or less happily