The Battle of the Giants

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11784, 21 March 1924, Page 3

The Battle of the Giants

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT-

Powerful Story of LoVe and JLdVentur&

-Brvi

J.B. Harris-Burland.

Author of: " Th« Splendidt BacriSet.* " The Half-doted Door",. " The Felgete Telit,",. ■V Ac., Ac.

fCOPTEIGHT.] CHAPTER XI. The pal© green, silken curtains of ike “office” window at Conway House were drawn to keep out the scorching hlazo of the sun. The door was open, and a draught, so faint that it did rot stir the curtains, was just perceptible in the stifling heat. Richard Margesson, with his coat off, and hia- sleeves turned up above his elbows, sat at the big desk, and smoked a cigarette. In front of him there was a large-scale map of a portion of North-West Canada. The map Was three feet square; and, dose to the Arctic Ocean, and the mouth of , the McGregor river, patches of the white map had been painted a pale rose-oolour. These were the alluvial properties of the Sangaya Syndicate—properties that the Syndicate was endeavouring to sell to Conrad Humber’s finance corporation for the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds in cash, and two hundred and fifty thousand fully paid £1 shares in a company that was to he floated with a capital of a million. One of the most eminent mining engineers in Fin glam d had reported upon the property, and his figures, dealing with eubio yards of gravel, and pennyweights of gold and working expenses, showed a minimum profit of £200,000 a year. Richard Margesson glanced, for the hundredth time at the report, stared at the map as though he .had seen that part of the world before, and then leant back in his chair, and turned hia thoughts to April Humber. He could picture her, that scorching afternoon, lying in a hammock placed in the shade of a great verandah, swaying gently to and fro, and fanning herself. He could see her closed eyes and the ripple of her golden brown hair in the tiny draught from the gaily coloured fan. And then again he pictured her standing waist, deep in the sea —a nereid olaa in the thin dark blue of her bathingdness, her white arms and neck flashing, in the sunlight, the water dropping like diamonds from her hair. And as these pictures passed tofoie his eyes, the hand that held his cigarette trembled, hi? eyes were dark with shadlows, and there were lines across his forehead. “She is nothing to me,” lie said to himself. “She must suffer with the rest of them. The sin of the father must be visited upon the children.” How often had these words passed through his thoughts since the day when he had gone mad and kissed her April- Humber, the daughter of the cheat who had condemned him to death by the meanest trick that could have been played on any man. The sin of Conrad Humber was that he had seemed to leave everything, and yet had left nothing, to chance. A more brutal, but more honest man would have come to blows over some trifle, and have killed his companion, or he would just have slipped off in the darkness and left his companion to die. In the fierce battle for life, he, Riohard Margesson, would have realised that this was the fortune of war—a war fought between two men, one of which had to die. But a card trick! Could anything be meaner than that? Nothing: for, if undetected, and if he, Margesson, had lived, Conrad Humber could have met him face to face again, and have shaken hands with him. Conrad Humber had left himself a way of escape, so that he could say to everyone, “The cards went against him. Each of ns had an equal chance.”

And this man was the father of April, and he had kissed April, and there she was, standing in his path. Again and again he had thrust her aside, hut she still returned to face him with her joyous youth and the smile on her lovely little faoe, and anger in her eyes, not because he had kissed her, but because he had said nothing to justify the outrage. Yet what could he have said—Richard Margesson, the man who only lived to bring Conrad Humber to ruin P Even if he had been passionately in love with her at the time—and that had not been> the case—he could have 6aid nothing. A young man, who might have found pleasure in life, he was old beyond his years, and hard and cruel, and with a single purpose. So particular was hej so firm in his resolve to accept no favour at the hands of Conrad Humber, that he had never even eaten a crumb of Conrad Humber’s food. His salary was small, and he had twice declined an offer to raise it. His services to his master had been invaluable. Yet he asked for no more than three pounds a week, and he would have worked for nothing, if it had been possible to do so without arousing Humber’s suspicion. “I have. a little money of my own,” he had said to Humber. And "the financier had never guessed that the “little money” was a great fortune that made the secretary equal to Conrad Humber himself. The money had come so easily. Hike Conrad Humber, Richard Margesson had touched -things without value and turned them into gold. And to Margesson all this wealth meant nothing but the overthrow of his enemy. It was Margesson who had beared the stock of the N.W. Finance Corporation —a few days after the Stock Exchange had returned to pre-war conditions, and allowed a man to sell that which he did not possess. He had forced it down to 3—-31. and there it had remained for a month. Then it had gone back to —4, and Margesson had closed his account, waiting for a more favourable opportunity. That opportunity was near at hand. He thought of all this as he sat there in the curious pale green light of the office —a light that gave the effect of being in a glass case under the sea. April came into his thought again. Her childish “rag,” the horror in her face when he had kissed her, the cold anger when lie had seen her again, and had refused to go upstairs to tea in the drawing-room. . Since then, he had! scarcely seen her, and for week after week they had never met at all. Her visit to Eastbourne had been quickly followed by the general exodus of the family to Oooden. He had been asked to go with them, and he had refused. Was it because of April, or because of his work? He was not quite sure. In any ease, he did not intend to let her interfere with the purpose of his -life—a purpose that had lasted ( through ten years—through, poverty

and wealth, through all tho Varying fortunes of a young man’s life. ‘Young?” he 6aid to himself. “No. I am very old.” Old he was, with that poison ever in his veins. And yet he remembered how he had smiled and shaken hands with Conrad Humber, even when he knew that Humber had cheated him out of his life. How easy then it would have been to have accused Humber of card-sharping, and shot the scoundrel dead. Nine out of ten would have done that, with no more compunction, than they would have felt over the shooting of a wolf. But ho had been 6orry for Conrad Humber then. He had said to himself, “Well I ought to have given the chance to him in any case. He had a wife and two children.” Two children. And April was one of them. He wondered what wonld have happened to April if he had killed her father. He did not like to think of that. How 1 brave and jolly he had heen at the time. Yet now memory could not even recapture that frame of mind. He had heen utterly boyish and foolish. But after he. had been so nearly tortured to death, when his mind had come out of its agony, he saw things differently. And it seemed to him that he had almost forgotten that other fellow—that jolly Richard Margeason, who had shaken hands with a coward and a card-sharper instead of putting the contents of two cartridges into him.

Well, here he was, a successful man, soured and miserable, without kindness or pity in his heart—an intelligent man, old before his time, a worker as hard in grain as Conrad Humber himself, where business affaire were concerned, and harder still in the private matters of a man’s life. Save for that one moment of weakness—that ridiculous moment—that dangerous moment —he had been strong, arid nothing had turned him from his purpose.

"I shall not be weak again,” he said, to himself. Only a little while ago ha had teen thinking of April Humber. But he would not think of her again, except as the daughter of his enemy They would not rome into oontact with each other. Alter what had happened she would naturally avoid him. He lit another cigarette and stndied the map that lay cn the table before him. Then he took out a smaller map from a drawer. It was on a larger saale, and contained nothing but the properties which the Sangaya Syndicate wished to sell to the N.W. finance corporation. Part of the property was on cne of the islands that lie ait the mouth of the McGregor river, part of it was fringed by Arctic Sea. For more than half the year no work oould be done, and even in the summer the soil had to be blasted away like rock. But the percentage ofl gold was astounding—in some cases as much as two ounces to the ton. The engineer 'who had made the reports was beyond suspicion. There was a fortune lying in that territory for anyone who could lake it.

Yet there was something wrong about the proposition—something that, as yet, (Richard Margesson had been unable to lay his finger upon, ft was there right enough. He knew that, for he knew that the man who held most of the shares in the Sangaya Syndicate was a “crook.” No one else in London—perhaps no one else in the world—knew that. Jim Frayden had a name for honesty, and Richard, Marge sson knew him to he a scoundrel. _ That was knowledge worth having in a deal like this. Anyone oould honestly have advised Conrad Humber to purchase the property, except the one man who knew the real character of the owner of it. Richard Margesson looked at his watch, and almost before he had replaced it in his pocket, a footman entered the room, and brought in Frayden’s card.