"Charlie Maxon, by glory! Who let you out?"
"Wh-who are you?"
"Who am I? Well, that's pretty good! Mean to say you can't see me? I'm Langhorn!"
XII: Starlight on Steel
When he had finished his examination of the broken window in the living-room, Herman Krech contrived—partly by his sheer physical bulk and partly by the exercise of a soft assertiveness that was saved by his bland geniality from being plain rudeness—to sequester Simon Varr for a word in private. To accomplish this end he was obliged to shake off his own wife, the tanner's wife, the Jason Bolts and Miss Ocky Copley, the last lady in especial revealing the pertinacity of a cockle-burr in her objection to being shaken off. Krech didn't succeed in losing her until he had shut the door of the study in her face with a courteously affected air of absent-mindedness.
"What do you want?" inquired Varr ungraciously.
"I've got a message for you—sorry if I'm intruding," replied the big man, half-amused and half-resentful at his host's tone. "I'm afraid it will annoy you—but most things do, don't they? But Creighton thought it best to give you a tip and of course I feel obliged to pass it on as received."
"All right. What is it?" said the tanner less irascibly.
"Practically a repetition of the warning I gave you this morning on my own account. I read him that note over the telephone. He said it sounded like the work of a nut, and added that a bad nut is often a dangerous proposition. He thinks you should take reasonable precautions against a personal attack at least until he gets here."