“Did he speak to you?”
“No, not a word. I don’t even think he dreams I have seen him. But it is hard to say how much he has found out. Oh, Jim, he’s slow and sly and cunning, and he won’t strike until the last minute. But when he does, he will try to—to smash us both!”
“I’ll kill that man as sure as I’m standing on this curbstone, if he ever butts in on this game of ours! This isn’t pool-room piking we’re at now, Frank—this is big and dangerous business!”
He had remembered the cigar-light in the dark passageway, and the mysterious disappearance, then later the taxi-cab that had strangely followed his own.
“No, no, Jim; you mustn’t say that!” she was murmuring to him, with a little shiver. “I’m afraid of him!”
“Well, I’m not,” said Durkin, and he swore softly and wickedly, as he repeated his threat. “What does he want to come into our lives for, now? He’s over and done with, long ago!”
“We are never over and done with anything we have been,” she almost sobbed, half tragically.
Durkin looked at her, a little impatient, and also a little puzzled.
“Frank, what is this man MacNutt to you?”
She was silent.