: Tinman by Gallon Tom - Fiction

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ble, breathing heavily, and trying to arrange his collar and tie; his face was ghastly. After a moment he pointed a shaking hand at me, and gasped out--

"He tried to murder me; he meant to murder me. We were--we were joking, gentlemen--and he--he tried to murder me."

"Yes, I tried to murder you," I said. "And I'll try again, with more success, when I get the chance, unless you take back what you've said."

"Charlie--Charlie--come away!" exclaimed my guardian, putting his hands on my breast, and pushing me back. "I'm sorry to have disturbed all you good people," he added, turning to the landlord, who was staring at us with a scared face; "but this is only a matter of hot blood. They'll shake hands in the morning; they'll be friends again."

They were dragging me away, while I strove to break from them; I called out again to Hockley. "You shall take back what you said; I'll make you eat your lie, or I'll kill you."

I do not think I quite understood what I was saying; even the shocked scared faces about me could not make me understand the gravity of it all. I found myself outside the closed doors of the room, panting and almost weeping with excitement, with the stout landlord holding me on one side, and a waiter on the other. My guardian was speaking--not to me, but to the landlord.

"Very well, since you insist, he shall not stop in the house," said Jervis Fanshawe. "I'll take him away to Mr. Patton's place; I can secure a bed for him there. Yes--yes--I quite understand, and I'm sorry you've been disturbed; it shall all be put right. Tell Mr. Hockley that I've gone home."

They got me out of the house; locked the door on me, in fact. I stood under the stars with Fanshawe, staring before me down the road, and panting heavily; for I knew that this was but the beginning. I seemed to see the foul lips of the man for ever breathing out lies about her--lies that must be stopped and killed now in their birth. That was what I must do, and quickly. This thing would be spread; I seemed to see the man whispering it here, there, and everywhere, with shrugs and leers and winks. Yes, I would kill it.

As in a sort of dream I heard my guardian talking to me. "Yes, my dear boy; I know it's abominable--shameful; but what can you do? Any one who knows you and knows her must know that it is all a lie from beginning to end. There--there--come away. I suppose if we lived in any other century, you might strike a man down for this; I think I should strike him down myself, if I were as young and strong as you are." He was glancing at me curiously as we stood there in the utter silence of the night; there seemed a challenge in his eyes. And his suggestion about any other century had brought back again to my mind the remembrance that I was her pure knight, pledged to do battle for her. I began to walk rapidly away in the direction of the house of the Pattons, with my guardian walking beside me, and putting in a word here and there that was meant to be soothing, and yet that only served to inflame my passion.

"I ought not to have said that about striking him down, Charlie; that would be murder," he went on. "And one may not murder another man, however much one may be tempted, or however richly the man may deserve death. But the worst of it is, of course, that one doesn't know how to stop him; he'll go on saying those things about that sweet girl, and people will begin to believe--to say there's no smoke without fire, and horrible things of that sort. What had we better do, Charlie?"

"You can leave it to me," I said. "You can safely leave it to me."

He seemed to be able to do what he liked at the house of the Pattons. A manservant let us in; my guardian seemed to whisper something to him to account for my dishevelled appearance, and for the fact that I had no hat. The man got a light in one of the lower rooms, and presently brought in a decanter and some glasses; then, at a further whispered suggestion from Fanshawe, retired and left us alone together. My guardian was hovering about me anxiously--now murmuring what a shame it was that such things should be said openly about such a girl as Barbara--now muttering what he would do if he were a younger man--now urging me feebly to forget all about it, and leave the man alone.

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