Jinnie's Plea

Jinnie did not answer. She stood contemplating his face. How she hated his smile, his white teeth, and his easy, suave manner. Their glances battled again for a moment across the distance.

"Why did you bring me here?" she demanded abruptly.

He spread his feet outward and hummed, toying the while with a smooth white chin.

"Sit down," said he, with assumed politeness.

Jinnie stared at him with contemptuous dread in her eyes.

"I don't want to; I want to know why I'm here."

"Can't you guess?" asked the stranger with an easy shrug.

"No," said Jinnie. "Why?"

"And you can't guess who I am?"

"No," repeated Jinnie once more, passionately, "and I want to know why I'm here."

He came toward her, piercing her face with a pair of compelling, mesmeric eyes that made her stagger back to the wall. Then he advanced a step nearer, covering the space Jinnie had yielded.

"I'm Jordan Morse," he then said, clipping his words off shortly.

If a gun had burst in Jinnie's face, she could have been no more alarmed. She was frozen to silence, and every former fear her father had given life to almost three years before, beset her once more, only with many times the amount of vigor. Nevertheless, she gave back look for look, challenge for challenge, while her fingers locked and interlocked. Her uncle, who had sent her father to his grave, the man who wanted her money, who desired her own death!