CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Flirt | ||
24. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Valentine Corliss had nothing to do but to wait for the money his friend Antonio would send him by cable. His own cable, anticipating his letter, had been sent yesterday, when he came back to the hotel, after lunching in the country with Cora.
As he walked down Corliss Street, after his tumultuous interview with her, he was surprised to find himself physically tremulous: he had not supposed that an encounter, however violent, with an angry woman could so upset his nerves. It was no fear of Pryor which shook him. He knew that Pryor did not mean to cause his arrest — certainly not immediately. Of course, Pryor knew that Cora would tell him. The old fellow's move was a final notification. It meant: "Get out of town within twenty-four hours." And Corliss intended to obey. He would have left that evening, indeed, without the warning; his trunk was packed.
He would miss Cora. He had kept a cool head
Of course it was best for him that he could return to his old trails alone and free; he saw that. Cora would have been a complication and an embarrassment without predictable end, but she would have been a rare flame for a while. He wondered what she meant to do; of course she had a plan. Should he try again, give her another chance? No; there was one point upon which she had not mystified him: he knew she really hated him.
. . . The wind was against the smoke that day; and his spirits rose, as he walked in the brisk
He had a glimmer of Richard Lindley beginning at the beginning again to build a modest fortune: it was the sort of thing the Richard Lindleys were made for. Corliss was not troubled. Richard had disliked him as a boy; did not like him now; but Corliss had not taken his money out of malice for that. The adventurer was not revengeful; he was merely impervious.
At the hotel, he learned that Moliterno's cable had not yet arrived; but he went to an agency of one of the steamship lines and reserved his passage, and to a railway ticket office and secured a compartment for himself on an evening train. Then he returned to his room in the hotel.
The mirror over the mantelpiece, in the front room of his suite, showed him a fine figure of a man: hale, deep-chested, handsome, straight and cheerful.
He nodded to it.
"Well, old top," he said, reviewing and summing up his whole campaign, "not so bad. Not so bad, all in all; not so bad, old top. Well played indeed!"
At a sound of footsteps approaching his door, he turned in casual expectancy, thinking it might be a boy to notify him that Moliterno's cable had arrived. But there was no knock, and the door was flung wide open.
It was Vilas, and he had his gun with him this time. He had two.
There was a shallow clothes-closet in the wall near the fireplace, and Corliss ran in there; but Vilas began to shoot through the door.
Mutilated, already a dead man, and knowing it, Corliss came out, and tried to run into the bedroom. It was no use.
Ray saved his last shot for himself. It did the work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Flirt | ||