"I'll tell you what you can do," I said, pointing toward Latreille. "You can ask this man what it was I ran down in my car last Hallow-e'en."
She was moving forward, with a face quite without fear by this time. But her brow clouded, at that speech of mine, and she came to a sudden stop.
"I don't need to ask him," she slowly acknowledged.
"Why not?"
"Because I know already."
"He told you?" I demanded, with a vicious and quite involuntary jab of my barrel-end into one of Latreille's intercostal spaces.
"Not directly," replied the ever-truthful Mary. "But it was through him that I found out. I know now it was through him."
"I thought so," I snorted. "And through him you're now going to find out that he was a liar and a slanderer. So be good enough to explain to her, Latreille, that it was a straw-stuffed dummy we ran down, a street-crowd's scare-crow, and nothing else!"
Latreille didn't answer me. He merely stood there with studious and half-closed eyes, a serpent-like squint of venom on his colorless face. It was, in fact, old Crotty who broke the silence.
"We'll do our talkin', young fellow, when the right time comes. And when we do, you're goin' to pay for an outrage like this, for an unprovoked assault on decent citizens!"