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Updated: June 21, 2025
Kenny stopped the chair with a jerk. "What do you mean by that?" he demanded. "I mean," said Adam Craig, "that I'll wheel my chair back where I can listen to music instead of rain. And if you wheel me back I'll do it again. The hallway's dark and it's full of turns but I'll manage somehow, if I break my neck." There was danger at every turn. A cold sweat came out on Kenny's forehead.
Consequently, P. Sybarite gained the eleventh floor platform very readily. But there he held up a long instant, dashed to discover his task made facile rather than obstructed. The window was wide open, to force whose latch he had thoughtfully provided himself with a fruit knife from Peter Kenny's buffet.
The bitter cold began to tell on his exhausted frame. In such circumstances a small matter causes a man to stumble. Kenny's foot caught on something a root it might be and he fell headlong into a ditch and was stunned. The cold did its work, and from that ditch he never rose again.
There was relief at least in that. Garry drew a long breath. If Kenny tramped his way, another inexplicable factor in his lunacy, by the time he reached the farmhouse Brian would be well on ahead. And Garry was bitterly familiar with Kenny's incapacity for steadiness of any kind. Kenny, it developed, was thinking in similar vein.
Even now with Adam's piercing eyes upon him, he had a feeling of invincibility; as if, aloof in the aerial sphere in which he seemed to float, he could shut the old man out. Adam stared at him with eagle-like intentness and a puzzled frown. His face said plainly that Kenny's mood was without precedent and therefore strategical.
Kenny's neck, well above the shoulder-blade, dark blood was welling slowly from an ugly puncture. And in front there was a corresponding puncture, but smaller. And presently his deft and gentle fingers, exploring the folds of the boy's undershirt, closed upon the bullet itself. "I don't believe," he announced, displaying his find, "you deserve such luck.
Ah! why must he live again that agonizing day when Eileen had gone out of his life forever? The voice went on, funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew away . . . with a passion of self . . . and he had died with mercy at his bedside, not love.
The small boys ran away as fast as possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next drove.
"How was that?" cried Bunny, laughing while Bunker and Ben played the music. "Fine!" cried Daddy Brown. "It's almost as good a show as the one I paid real money to see," laughed grandpa. "What's next?" asked Jimmie Kenny's mother, who had come with her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. "It's your turn now, Sue," whispered Bunny to his sister. "Do your act."
If for a minute stark, incredulous terror swept through Kenny's veins, his laughing lips belied it. Then he kissed Joan lightly on the cheek and went, whistling, down the steps with Brian. "And you, Brian?" he said, halting on the lower step to light a cigarette. "What shall I tell John?" "Tell him all," said Brian. He talked hurriedly of his plans. Kenny held out his hand.
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