The AvengerOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Avenger
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Mystery fiction
"You'll excuse me if I'm a bit excited, Mr. Wrayson," he continued. "I'll
leave you to judge how I've been served when you hear all. He got over
me, and I lent him nearly half of my savings, and he started back to
England. He took this flat at two hundred pounds a year the very week he
got back, and he's lived, from what I can hear, like a lord ever since.
Will you believe this, sir! He sent back the money he borrowed from me a
quid at a time, and wrote me to say he was saving it with great
difficulty--out of his salary of three pounds a week. When he'd paid back
the lot, I never heard another line from him. I was doing rotten myself,
and he knew well enough that I should have been over first steamer if I'd
known about his two hundred a year flat, and all the rest of it. What do
you think of my brother, sir, eh? What do you think of him? Treated me
nicely, didn't he? Nine pounds ten it was I lent him, and nine pounds ten
was all I had back, and here he was living like a duke, and lying to me
about his three pounds a week; and there was I hawkering groceries on a
barrow, selling sham diamonds, any blooming thing to get a mouthful to
eat. Nice sort of brother that, eh? What?"
Wrayson repressed an inclination to smile. There was something grimly
humourous about his visitor's indignation.
"You must remember," he said, "that your brother is dead, and that his
death itself was a terrible one. Besides, even if you have had to wait
for a little time, you are his heir now."
The young man was breathing hard. The perspiration stood out in little
beads upon his forehead. He showed his teeth a little. He was becoming
more and more unpleasant to look upon as his excitement increased.
"Look here, Mr. Wrayson!" he exclaimed. "I'm coming to that. I've been
through his things. Clothes! I never saw such a collection. All from a
West End tailor, too! And boots! Patent, with white tops; pumps,
everything slap up! Heaven knows what he must have spent upon his
clothes. Bills from restaurants, too; why, he seems to have thought
nothing of spending a quid or two on a dinner or a supper. Photographs
of ladies, little notes asking him to tea; why, between you and me, Mr.
Wrayson, sir, he was living like a prince! And look here!"
He rose to his feet and planked down a bank-book on the desk in front
of Wrayson.
"Look here, sir," he declared. "Every three months, within a day or two,
cash--five hundred pounds. Here you are. Here's the last: March
27--cash, £500! Look back! January 1--By cash £500! October 2--cash,
£500! There you are, right back to the very day he arrived in England.
And he left South Africa with ten bob of mine in his pocket, after he'd
paid his passage! and from what I can hear, he never did a day's work
after he landed. And me over there working thirteen and fourteen hours a
day, and half the time stony-broke! There's a brother for you! Cain was
a fool to him!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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