Free Murder in Piccadilly by Charles Kingston

keep her.”
    â€œShe’s dangerous,” he repeated, leaning against the sideboard and staring at her. “Ruby, you’ll think I’m an old fool, but I’m afraid of Nancy Cheldon.”
    â€œYou are certainly foolish,” she retorted with a laugh. “What is there to be afraid of?”
    â€œI hope you’re right, but you can’t look at things from my standpoint. You’re the fond, doting mother who can think no evil of her son, and I am the not too affectionate uncle who can think anything good or bad of his nephew. Ruby, this girl has done more than make Bobbie fall in love with her—she’s transformed him, and I believe she’s got sufficient influence over him to drive him to any extreme.”
    A haunting dread passed over her like a spasm of impulsive terror, and she tried to banish recollections of it by endeavouring to be facetious.
    â€œYou’re an incorrigible leg-puller,” she said, speaking rapidly because her state of nerves would not allow her to think first. “Why, you’ll be hinting next that to get the Cheldon property Bobby would—” She stopped dead, frightened by what she had already blurted out, and her fright was not lessened when her brother-in-law caught her by the left arm and drew her towards himself.
    â€œSo it’s occurred to you, too, has it?” he asked, in a voice consistent with the sudden return of greyness to his cheeks. “Ruby, the position is too serious for us to play hide and seek with mere words. Let me put it this way. Bobbie has not only to be saved from this adventuress but from himself. He’s weak and easily influenced, and his weakness is all the more apparent because he poses as strong. There’s no knowing what he may try to do to gratify this harpy. He may even—”
    â€œI won’t listen,” she cried, putting her hands to her ears.
    He smiled to reassure her.
    â€œI’m not angry with you, Ruby, and certainly not with Bobbie. I don’t believe I’ve anything to fear from him, but if you allow him to get into bad company there’s no knowing what he may do. The weak can often become strong in the hands of the unscrupulous. Bobbie will never injure me—he won’t have the pluck. Now you’re making a face.” He laughed again. “Do you wish me to say that he will attempt to abbreviate my existence on this earth? Oh, you women, there’s no pleasing you.” He turned and removed from the decanter the inch of whisky it contained.
    Ruby Cheldon went over to the window, not because she wished to inspect the curtains or by parting them feast her eyes on Juniper Street by moonlight. The act was due entirely to a wish to get as far away as possible from her brother-in-law and to escape from her disturbing thoughts. The latter, however, only doubled in strength and numbers.
    Until the last few days she had never quite realised the exact importance of Massy Cheldon to her son. For one thing she had never thought of the possibility of her brother-in-law dying. He was only a few, a very few years older than herself, and to have contemplated his decease would have meant coupling with it musings on her own. To her the Cheldon inheritance had been something which in the ordinary and usual course of events might devolve on her son when he was middle-aged. The last three holders of the property had been round about sixty when they had succeeded. Bobbie was twenty-three. It would be time to indulge in golden daydreams when he was in the late forties. But now!
    She shrank from repeating the word “Murder” to herself, but it had forced itself on her that afternoon Bobbie had casually related an epitome of Florence’s latest amatory problem, for as he had spoken of the sudden accession to wealth of Florence’s faithless follower she had seen in his eyes the envy and longing created by the irresistible comparison with his own problem.