oing to be married. Married. And
he had hoped, he thought rather pitiably, that even though Nancy had
so firmly decided to blight him forever she might have a few pleasant
memories of their engagement at least. Instead--well, he could see the
headlines now. "Big Financier, Youth and Mystery Woman Die in Triple
Slaying." "_Dead_--Oliver Crowe, Yale 1917, of Melgrove, L. I."

It hadn't been his job, damn it, it hadn't been his job at all. It was
now, though, with Ted perfectly helpless on the fire-escape where any
crazy person could take pot-shots at him as if he were a plaster pipe
in a shooting gallery. The idea of escape had somehow never seriously
occurred to him--what had happened in the evening already had impressed
him so with a sense of inane fatality that he could not even conceive of
the possibility of any-thing's coming right. In any event, Ted, tied
up the way he was, was too heavy and clumsy to carry down even the most
ordinary flight of stairs--and if he were going to be shot, he somehow
preferred to gasp his last breaths out on a comfortably carpeted floor
rather than clinging like a disreputable spider to the iron web of a
fire-escape.

Oliver sighed--Nancy's firmness had admittedly quite ruined all the
better things in life--but even the merest sort of mere existence had
got to be, at times, a rather pleasant convention--how pleasant, he
felt, he had never quite realized somehow until just now. Then, with a
vague idea of getting whatever was to happen over with as quickly and
decently as possible, he settled his tie once more and trotted meekly
through the dining-room and beyond the curtains.

XL

"Why, Mr. Piper!" was Oliver's first and wholly inane remark.

It was not what he had intended to say at all--something rather more
dramatic and on the lines of "Shoot if you must this old grey head,
but if you will only listen to a reasonable explanation--" had been
uppermost in his mind. But the sight of Peter's father crouched over
what must be Mrs. Severance's body, his weak hands fumbling for her
wrist and heart, his voice thin with a senile sorrow as if he had
been stricken at once and in an instant with a palsy of incurable age,
brought the whole world of Southampton and house-parties and reality
that Oliver thought he had lost touch with forever, back to him so
vividly that all he could do was gape at the tableau on the floor.

Mr. Piper looked up and for a second of relief Oliver thought tha