d.

Unless Anthony was lying, he meant to tell the truth; and while some of
those present might believe the truth, Beatrice Boller was not among the
number.

"I don't know, Dalton," Anthony began evenly, "that I have anything to
say in extenuation of what I have done. Evidently I lost my head, even
to the point of downright insanity; some of us do that occasionally, you
know. Brooding over the business was responsible, I suppose. Your
Celestial Oil has been cutting pretty heavily into Imperial Liniment
this last year."

"Humph!" said Dalton.

"Cutting in so heavily that whatever efforts I have been able to put
forth have been of no avail whatever," Anthony pursued. "Last week--all
day last Saturday, in fact--I went over the year's business and it
fairly maddened me to see the falling off. I spent Sunday thinking and I
am frank to say, Dalton, that by Sunday night I was all but ready to
murder you. Toward midnight I conceived what seemed to be a means of
forcing you into some sort of mutual contract, by which each of us could
do business with the assurance that the other wasn't coming over to take
away what didn't belong to him."

"_You_ get away with a thing like that?" Dalton demanded.

"It was a wild notion," Anthony sighed. "I knew that talking was
useless, I knew that fighting you openly was equally useless, because
once I became too conspicuous I knew that you'd sail in and wreck me. At
the same time something had to be done and that in mighty short order,
or Fry's Imperial was likely to die a natural death. Therefore, Dalton,
I perfected the scheme of kidnaping your daughter and holding her until
you'd come to terms."

"Great----"

"Rest easy!" Mr. Fry smiled. "Part of it succeeded, but she hasn't been
injured and I ask you to believe, at least, that I never had any idea of
injuring her. What I did mean to do was to threaten you, through a third
person I met most unfortunately and who is, not to put too fine a point
upon it, one of the slimiest crooked lawyers in the world--what I meant
to do was to make you understand that, unless you came to terms, the
girl would be killed!

"If the details interest you I'll confess that I had a note sent to the
girl last evening, by a messenger who succeeded in telephoning her and
having her meet him just outside your home. The note informed Miss
Dalton that Vining here--oh, sit still, Vining, you may settle with me
when I've finished--that Vining here was engaged,