The Girl in the Mirror Part 21

The sudden spark that in the old days would have warned Devon's friends of an impending outburst appeared now in his black eyes, but he kept his temper.

"Would you mind confiding these plans to me?" he suggested. "They would interest me, profoundly."

Shaw shook his sleek brown head.

"Oh, I couldn't do that," he said, with an indulgent smile. "But I have a proposition to make to you. Perhaps you will listen to it, instead."

"I'll listen to it," Laurie promised.

"It is short and to the point. Give me your word that you will stop meddling in Miss Mayo's affairs, which are also my affairs," he added parenthetically, "and that you will never make an effort to see her again. As soon as you have given me this promise, I will escort you to the front door and bid you an eternal farewell, with great pleasure."

"I'm looking forward to that pleasure, myself," confessed the visitor.

"But before we throw ourselves into the delights of it, suppose you outline the other side of your proposition. I suppose it _has_ another side."

Shaw frowned at his cigar.

"It doesn't sound pretty," he confessed, with regret.

"I'll judge of that. Let's have it."

"Well,"--Shaw sighed, dropped the cigar into the tray at his elbow, and sat up to face the young man with an entire change of manner--"The rest of it," he said, calmly, "is this. Unless you make that promise we can't have the farewell scene we are both looking forward to so eagerly."

"You mean--" Laurie was staring at him incredulously--"you mean you don't intend to let me leave here?"

Shaw shrugged deprecating shoulders.

"Oh, surely! But not immediately."

His guest turned and addressed the fire.

"I never listened to such nonsense in my life," he gravely a.s.sured it.

Shaw nodded.

"It does seem a little melodramatic," he conceded. "I tried to think of something better, something less brusque, as it were. But the time was so short; I really had no choice."

"What do you mean by that?" Laurie had again turned to face him.

"Exactly what I say. Think it over. Then let me have your decision."

Laurie moved closer to him.

"Get up," he commanded.

Shaw looked surprised.

"I am very comfortable here."

"_Get up!_" The words came out between the young man's clenched teeth.

Shaw again shrugged deprecating shoulders. Then, with another of his wide, sharp-toothed grins, he rose and faced his visitor. At the desk across the room the big blond secretary rose, also, and fixed his pale blue eyes on his employer.

"Now," said Laurie, "tell me what the devil you are driving at, and what all this mystery means."

"What an impulsive, high-strung chap you are!" Shaw was still grinning his wide grin.

"You won't tell me?"

"Of course I won't! I've told you enough now to satisfy any reasonable person. Besides, you said you had something to say to me."

He was deliberately goading the younger man, and Laurie saw it. He saw, too, over Shaw's shoulder, the tense, waiting figure of the secretary.

He advanced another step.

"Yes," he said, "I've got three things to say to you. One is that you're a contemptible, low-lived, blackmailing hound. The second is that before I get through with you I'm going to choke the truth out of your fat throat. And the third is that I'll see you in h.e.l.l before I give you any such promise as you ask. Now, I'm going."

He walked over to the couch and picked up his hat and coat. The secretary unostentatiously insinuated himself into the center of the room. Shaw alone remained immovable and unmoved. Even as Laurie turned with the garments in his hands, Shaw smiled his wide smile and encircled the room with a sweeping gesture of one arm.

"Go, then, by all means, my young friend," he cried jovially, "but _how_?"

Laurie's eyes followed the gesture. He had already observed the absence of windows. Now, for the first time, with a sudden intake of breath, he discovered a second lack. Seemingly, there was no exit from the room. Of course there was a door somewhere, but it was cleverly concealed, perhaps behind some revolving piece of furniture; or possibly it was opened by a hidden spring. Wherever it was, it could be found. In the meantime, his manoeuver had given him what he wanted--more s.p.a.ce in which to fight two men. With a sudden movement Shaw picked up the silver-framed photograph, and ostentatiously blew the dust off it. This done, he held it out and looked at it admiringly.

"You will stay here, but you will not be alone," he promised, with his wide, sharp-toothed grin. "This will keep you company. See how the charming lady smiles at the prospect--"

He dropped the picture, which fell with a crash on the tiled flooring around the fireplace. The gla.s.s broke and splintered. Shaw gasped and gurgled under the strangling hold of the powerful fingers on his throat.

Lamp and table were overturned in the struggle that carried the three men half a dozen times across the room and back.

Laurie, fighting two opponents with desperate fury, could still see their forms and Shaw's bulging eyes in the firelight. Then he himself gasped and choked. Something wet and sweet was pressed against his face.

He heard an excited whisper:

"Hold on! Be careful there. Not too much of that!"

A moment more and he had slipped over the edge of the world and was dropping through black s.p.a.ce.

CHAPTER XI

A BIT OF BRIGHT RIBBON

When Laurie opened his eyes blackness was still around him, a blackness without a point of light. But as his mind slowly cleared, the picture he saw in his last conscious moment flashed across his mental vision--the dim, firelit room, the struggling, straining figures of Shaw and the blond secretary. He heard again the hissed caution, "Not too much of that!"

He sat up, dizzily. There _had_ been "too much of that." He felt faint and mildly nauseated. His hands, groping in the darkness, came in contact with a brick floor; or was it the tiling around the fireplace?

He did not know. He decided to sit quite still for a moment, until he could pull himself together.

His body felt stiff and sore. There must have been a dandy fight in that dingy old room, he reflected with satisfaction. Perhaps the other two men were lying somewhere near him in the darkness. Perhaps they, too, were knocked out. He hoped they were. But no, of course not. Again he remembered the hurried caution, "Not too much of that."