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At times Garratt Skinner rubbed Hine's limbs and stamped about the ledge to keep some warmth within himself. Walter Hine grew weaker and weaker. At times he was delirious; at times he came to his senses. "You leave me," he whispered once. "You have been a good friend to me. You can do no more. Just leave me here, and save yourself." Garratt Skinner made no answer.
Walter Hine was, indeed, indignant. "Why did you ask him to come again?" he asked, angrily, as the garden door closed upon Chayne. Garratt Skinner laid his hand on Walter Hine's arm. "Don't you worry, Wallie," he said, confidentially. "Every time Chayne comes here he loses ten marks. Give him rope! He does not, after all, know a great deal of geography."
He wanted to lay his hands upon the money for which Hine's life was insured." Garratt Skinner leaned back in his chair. His eyes never left Chayne's face, his face grew set and stern. He had a dangerous look, the look of a desperate man at bay. "Then there is a certain incident to be considered which took place in the house near Weymouth.
That instance remained for a long time vividly in her mind, and at a later time she spoke of it with consequences of a far-reaching kind. She thought then, as she thought now, only of the kindness of her father's action, and for the first week of Hine's visit that thought remained with her. She was on the alert, but nothing occurred to arouse in her a suspicion.
But he wondered whether it was only to counterbalance and destroy Sylvia's influence that Garratt Skinner had introduced cocaine to Hine's notice; whether he had not had in view some other end, even still more sinister. "I saw very little of Mr. Hine after our return to London," she continued. "He did not come often to the house, but when he did come, each time I saw that he had changed.
Garratt Skinner had passed his arm through Walter Hine's and held him so, plying him with stories, bending down his keen furrowed aquiline face toward him as though he had no thought in the world but to make him his friend and bind him with affection; and Walter Hine looked up and listened and laughed, a vain, weak wisp of a creature, flattered to the skies and defenceless as a rabbit.
"That's famous," cried Garratt Skinner, looking once more at his watch. He did not say that they had lost yet another hour upon the face of the buttress. It was now half past nine in the morning. "We are twelve thousand feet up, Wallie," and he swung to his left, and led the party up the ridge of the buttress. As they went along this ridge, Wallie Hine's courage rose.
She thought of his caresses, his smile of affection, his comradeship, and she shuddered. Walter Hine's words had informed her to-day to what use her father had designed her. She was his decoy. She lay upon her bed with her hands clenched, repeating the word in horror. His decoy! The moonlight poured through the open window, the music of the stream filled the room.
There was Wallie Hine's wavering, unfinished signature at the bottom right-hand corner. Parminter had guided his hand as far as the end of the Christian name, before he tore the check out and threw it away. The amount of the body of the check had been filled in in Barstow's hand. "You had better give it to me, Sylvia," he said, his fingers moving restlessly on the table-cloth.
But when the bets ceased and no more cards were played I used to puzzle over why they ceased last year. But I think I have hit upon the explanation. My father discovered then what I only found out a few weeks ago. I wrote to Mr. Hine's grandfather, telling him that his grandson was ill, and asking him whether he would not send for him. I thought that would be the best plan." "Yes, well?"
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