The Devil's Advocate by Fred M. White

Once inside the Bungalow, Macrae enjoyed the sensation of turning on the electric lights and surveying his own property quite alone for the first time. He pulled down the blinds, and drew the curtains, after which he lay back on the lounge in one of the latticed windows and sighed with deep satisfaction as he contemplated all the luxury with which he was surrounded. It seemed to him, indeed, that he was a fortunate man to have achieved all this in so short a space of time. It was only yesterday that he had come out of the Army, or so it seemed, only too glad to take the first thing that was offered him. Before the Great War he had written one or two short stories with indifferent success, but these five years had broadened his mind and given him a power of expression which he realised with wonder and delight. Now, nothing came amiss to his pen. He had managed to write a successful book, and those serial stories of his were being eagerly sought after. By comparison, his work on the 'Hitherfield Mercury' was child's play. He had more or less a free hand, because his employer was a man of considerable means, and one who always spoke his mind freely. Therefore, Macrae was encouraged to attack abuses wherever he found them, and that easy sarcasm of his had bitten pretty deeply into the minds of a good many citizens whose actions had not commended them to the public. Especially severe had Macrae been on a local money-lender known as Joseph Baines, a miserly old man who lived all by himself in a cottage at the back of the town, and one whose cold-blooded extortions had become a by-word in Hitherfield. Macrae had enjoyed that immensely, and his series of articles exposing Baines' methods had been vastly appreciated by readers of the 'Hitherfield Mercury.'

All these things were passing in Macrae's mind as he sat there enjoying his new-found prosperity. He remembered the day when he had first seen Philippa, and how, much against his will, Richard Farrell, a rising young solicitor, had introduced him to the girl with the blue eyes and pleasant smile. He had not been ignorant of the fact that Farrell was an admirer of Philippa's himself, but he did not know, because Philippa had never mentioned it, that there had been something like an understanding between those two before Macrae came along. And there was another thing Macrae, in his happy ignorance, did not know. It had seemed to him that Farrell had taken his disappointment philosophically enough, but deep down in his heart was a bitter enmity of the successful journalist, and a determined vow to come between Macrae and his choice by fair means or foul, if the opportunity ever offered itself. Philippa might have suspected something of this, and, indeed, in uneasy moments she did. But she put the thought out of her mind and said nothing. That sort of thing was all very well in books, but not in the least likely to happen in a quiet spot like Hitherfield. Meanwhile Farrell smiled when they met, he shook hands with Macrae, and congratulated him, but he was waiting his chance all the same.