"I am going, but not until after you have gone," said Holbrook. "By some strange fate we are all here, and it is best for certain things to be settled before we separate again. I have tried to keep out of your way; I have sunk my identity; I have relinquished the things of life that men hold dear--honor, friends, ambition, and now you and I have got to have a settlement."
"You seem rather sure of yourself," sneered the older, turning uneasily in his chair.
"I am altogether sure of myself. I have been a fool, but I see the error of my ways and I propose to settle matters with you now and here. You have got to drop your game of annoying Patricia; you've got to stop using your own daughter as a spy--"
"You lie, you lie!" roared the other, leaping to his feet. "You can not insinuate that my daughter is not acting honorably toward Patricia."
My mind had slowly begun to grasp the situation and to identify the men before me. It was as though I looked upon a miniature stage in a darkened theater, and, without a bill of the play, was slowly finding names for the players. Holbrook, _alias_ Hartridge, the boat-maker of the Tippecanoe, was not Henry Holbrook, but Henry's brother, Arthur! and I sought at once to recollect what I knew of him. An instant before I had half turned to go, ashamed of eavesdropping upon matters that did not concern me; but the Voice that had sent me held me to the window. It was some such meeting as this that Helen must have feared when she sent me to the houses-boat, and everything else must await the issue of this meeting.
"You had better sit down, Henry," said Arthur Holbrook quietly. "And I suggest that you make less noise. This is a lonely place, but there are human beings within a hundred miles."
Henry Holbrook paced the floor a moment and then flung himself into a chair again, but he bent forward angrily, nervously beating his hands together. Arthur went on speaking, his voice shaking with passion.
"I want to say to you that you have deteriorated until you are a common damned blackguard, Henry Holbrook! You are a blackguard and a gambler. And you have made murderous attempts on the life of your sister; you drove her from Stamford and you tried to smash her boat out here in the lake. I saw the whole transaction that afternoon, and understood it all--how you hung off there in the _Stiletto_ and sent that beast to do your dirty work."