and
striking misdirected blows.

Neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his
sides. Keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy
table and held him there and looked at him.

"You shan't answer that 'phone," Mr. Brady cried, in a last futile burst
of defiance. "You shan't stop me. You shan't interfere. I'll kill him, I
tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. You shan't----"

Mr. Brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes.

"Through?" said Neil presently.

"Yes," he muttered.

"Do you mean it?"

Mr. Brady nodded sullenly.

"You've made a fool of yourself?"

Mr. Brady nodded again.

"Neil," he got out presently, "I can make it up to you. I haven't been
square with you, but I can. I will. You don't know----"

"You've done talking enough. Will you go now?"

"Yes."

"You'll quiet down and go to mother's and stay there till I come?"

"Yes."

Neil let him go.

"Maybe I'll finish up your friend for you myself, Charlie, after you
leave here," he offered. "I've thought of it often enough. Now I come
here and fight for him instead of fighting against him. I fight with
you. Poor old Charlie. Murder and sudden death! I tell you, things like
that don't happen in Green River."

Neil stopped talking suddenly. The telephone at his elbow had rung
again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient
voice speaking. Neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her
audacious hat, and answered.

At once, strangely intimate and near in that room where the three had
been shut in for the last half hour alone and away from the rest of the
world while it went on as usual or faster, a man's voice spoke to him.
It was almost unrecognizable, so excited and hoarse, but it was Luther
Ward's.

"Hello," Neil said. "Hello. Yes, this is Everards'. No, he can't come to
the 'phone. He--what? What's that?"

Neil stopped and listened breathlessly. Mr. Brady, slinking head down
from the room, turned curiously to stare at him, and Judith, slipping
across the room like a little white ghost, drew close to him and felt
for his hand. Neil took her hand, this time with no response of heart or
nerves. He had put down the telephone, replacing the receiver
mechanically, but Luther Ward's voice still echoed in his ears.

It had spoken to an uncanny accompaniment of half-heard voices, rattling
unintelligibly in the room where Ward was, the prosaic, t