His assassin was the son of a
charwoman formerly working at the bank, who had been dismissed from her
job by the manager on account of chronic intemperance. His name was
Henri Leturc."
From that moment Blenkinthrope was tacitly accepted as the Munchausen of
the party. No effort was spared to draw him out from day to day in the
exercise of testing their powers of credulity, and Blenkinthrope, in the
false security of an assured and receptive audience, waxed industrious
and ingenious in supplying the demand for marvels. Duckby's satirical
story of a tame otter that had a tank in the garden to swim in, and
whined restlessly whenever the water-rate was overdue, was scarcely an
unfair parody of some of Blenkinthrope's wilder efforts. And then one
day came Nemesis.
Returning to his villa one evening Blenkinthrope found his wife sitting
in front of a pack of cards, which she was scrutinising with unusual
concentration.
"The same old patience-game?" he asked carelessly.
"No, dear; this is the Death's Head patience, the most difficult of them
all. I've never got it to work out, and somehow I should be rather
frightened if I did. Mother only got it out once in her life; she was
afraid of it, too. Her great-aunt had done it once and fallen dead from
excitement the next moment, and mother always had a feeling that she
would die if she ever got it out. She died the same night that she did
it. She was in bad health at the time, certainly, but it was a strange
coincidence.
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