Motion Picture Magazine, May 1914 (1914)

THE RIDERS OF PETERSHAM intend to stand by your father and help him clean up the town." The carriage creaked to a stand- still before a ramshackle building, half house, half shop. She looked at him sweetly, and the blood thrilled •and sang in strange turbulence thru his veins. "This is home," said Emily Bur- nay. "I know my father will be glad to see you soon." "And you?"—boldly. "I?" she smiled, and he could not know that just then her pulses, too, were swifter. '' Oh, yes, suttinly—but I dont count. It's father that edits the News! Good-night, and thank you, suh." As he rode to his uncle's house, thru the fragrant dusk of the South, Richard Coke smiled and hummed a line or two beneath his breath, and smiled again. But he did not know that he was smiling or that the verse on his lips was a lavender-sweet old love-song about a lady's eyes. ""Well, Dick, my boy!" his uncle slapped him bluffly on the shoulder. "So you're twenty-one at last, eh? And anxious to shoulder the Atlas load of wealth!" Richard Coke laughed boyishly, sur- rendering his single bag to the care of the negro butler. "Well, uncle," he said cheerily, "no gladder than you will be to get rid of it, I expect. It must have been an awful bother to you all these years, and I'm no end grateful." The handsome face opposite changed subtly, tho not a feature moved. "Yes—of course—but we'll talk of that later." He led the way across a beautifully fitted living-room, his nephew following with ill-concealed glances of surprise. Why, Uncle Julius must be rich —strange, he had always thought somehow that he was almost poor. The dining-room, luxu- rious as the other, was a further reve- lation—flowers, plate and glasses that glowed and burned in amber. "Brandy—'42," said the older Coke, lifting his glass with a bow; "your health, my boy." It was late when they returned to the living-room. The clock on the mantel yawned midnight, and the but- ler appeared, carrying two candles, in quaint old silver sticks, which he lighted at the open blaze. The older man went to a huge walnut secretary and drew a tin box from a locked compartment. "Here, my dear Dick, are your se- curities," he said pleasantly. "Be careful of the box, for if it should be — lost we'll say, your wealth would be gone also. Tomorrow morning we'll go over them together. Good- night. I hope you will sleep well." "Good-night, uncle." Richard Coke tucked the box under one arm and lifted his candlestick. "I hope you dont want to get rid of me at once, even when my affairs are wound up. Somehow, I have a feeling I'm going to like Petersham." The man, left alone in the great, darkened room, looked after the boy until his receding shadow flared across the upper walls and disappeared. Then he drew a long breath and, in the wavering candle-light, a some- thing sinister twisted the handsome face. "Yes, nephew," he said aloud, and shrugged his shoulders; "yes, I hope you are going to sleep very well tonight." v It seemed to Richard only a moment after he had closed his eyes before something drew them open again. He lay blinking into the impersonal darkness, sending out his senses like prying tentacles seeking the cause. There it came—a stealthy rub-rub against the woodwork near the head of the bed. Thru the open window the sound came plainer and plainer, nearer. He strained his eyes toward the indistinct square and, breathlessly, reached out to the table beside him and secured the dagger paper-knife he had noticed there. Suddenly he felt his heart leap to his throat in sheer nervous horror. His fingers, grasping the dagger, had nearly brushed against a hand! He stared, fascinated. In the pale moonlight the hand showed on the table, white, motionless, as if a severed, breathless