Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/89



food for thought. It was beginning to look to Val as though this man, who was in this business so mysteriously and so unexplainedly, was to be a storm center around which the affair revolved. He had made it plain that Val’s presence in any way was unwelcome; there had even been a veiled threat, if he continued his attentions to Miss Pomeroy.

Why did the man who had no hands desire him to keep away? Why was it so important that he had gone to the trouble personally to warn him? And now that he knew Val suspected him of having been in his room and stolen the books from him, undoubtedly he knew that Val, in his mind, implicated him in the murder of the bookseller, for there the books had been the only things taken, also—the books sold by Miss Pomeroy. That being the case he would from now on, beyond peradventure of a doubt, consider Val as more than a rival for the attention of Miss Pomeroy, if indeed they were rivals. Probably, hoped Val, he would consider him as rather a dangerous enemy. That was good; he would rather have this man an open enemy than a lukewarm acquaintance, rather a final finish fight with him than continual skirmishing and veiled attacks. One got somewhere by a fight—either one was victorious or he lost; either the spoils of victory were Rh