Page:The Avenger.djvu/277

Rh The words leaped from his mouth. He was half beside himself.

"I say let us open the packet and look it through ourselves before we decide. What the devil business is it of anybody else's. He was my brother and your husband. These people weren't even his friends. They've no right to poke their noses into our affairs. You tell them so, sister-in-law. Give me the packet. Come away with me somewhere where we can look it through quietly. I'm fair and straight. It shall be halves, I swear. I say, sister-in-law Agnes, you don't want to go back to the refreshment bar, do you?"

"No!" she moaned. "No! no!"

"Nor do I want to go back to the gutter," he declared fiercely. "But money isn't to be had for the picking up. Ten thousand pounds Morris expected to get for that packet. It's hard if we can't make half of that."

She looked up at Wrayson as though for advice.

"Mrs. Barnes," he said gravely, "I can tell you what is in that packet. You can see for yourself, then, whether it is anything by means of which you can make money. It consists of the letters of a very famous woman to the man whom she loved. They were stolen from him on the battlefield. I do not wish to pain you, but the thief was Morris Barnes. The friends of the lady who wrote them paid your brother two thousand pounds a year. Her enemies offered him—ten thousand pounds down. There is the secret of Morris Barnes' wealth."

Sydney Barnes leaned over the back of her chair. His hot whisper seemed to burn her cheek.

"Keep the packet, sister-in-law. Don't part!"

"Your brother-in-law," Wrayson remarked, "is evidently disposed to continue your husband's operations.