Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/462

 Nor was this enough for his hatred. There were some broken pieces of statuary on the ground. He took a carved head, rolled it along the grass, and sent it crashing down the well. A little farther away was a stack of old, rusty cannon balls. These also he rolled to the edge and pushed in. Five, ten, fifteen cannon balls went scooting down, one after the other, banging against the walls with a loud and sinister noise which the echo swelled into the angry roar of distant thunder.

"There, take that, Lupin! I'm sick of you, you dirty cad! That's for the spokes you put in my wheel, over that damned inheritance!… Here, take this, too!… And this!… And this!… Here's a chocolate for you in case you're hungry.… Do you want another? Here you are, old chap! catch!"

He staggered, seized with a sort of giddiness, and had to squat on his haunches. He was utterly spent. However, obeying a last convulsion, he still found the strength to kneel down by the well, and leaning over the darkness, he stammered, breathlessly:

"Hi! I say! Corpse! Don't go knocking at the gate of hell at once!… The little girl's joining you in twenty minutes.… Yes, that's it, at four o'clock.… You know I'm a punctual man and keep my appointments to the minute.… She'll be with you at four o'clock exactly.

"By the way, I was almost forgetting: the inheritance—you know, Mornington's hundred millions—well, that's mine. Why, of course! You can't doubt that I took all my precautions! Florence will explain everything presently.… It's very well thought out—you'll see—you'll see"