Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/269

 to another life, as he sat there coercing his memory to meet the past, the abysmal and embittered past which he had grown to hate.

"Are you trying to say this Binhart case was a frame up?" he suddenly cried out.

"They wanted you out of the way. It was the only trick they could think of."

"That's a lie!' declared Blake.

"It 's not a lie. They knew you 'd never give up. They even handicapped you—started you wrong, to be sure it would take time, to be positive of a clear field."

Blake stared at her, almost stupidly. His mind was groping about, trying to find some adequate motive for this new line of duplicity. He kept warning himself that she was not to be trusted. Human beings, all human beings, he had found, moved only by indirection. He was too old a bird to have sand thrown in his eyes.

"Why, you welched on Binhart yourself. You put me on his track. You sent me up to Montreal!"