'There, there, Chris--let's say no more about him.'
'We'll be done with him presently. I don't know how it was, but I suspected and disliked him from the first. That trick of his of curling his moustache into his mouth--old Mac told me he bites his nails----'
'I cannot tell what it was that made me pause suddenly here, but pause I did, and the sentence was not concluded.
'Do you know where Jessie lives, Turk?'
'Yes, Chris, but you mustn't ask me to tell you. I am on my parole.' He repeated this statement with a certain air of enjoyment.
'Very well,' I said. But can you tell me when Jessie is likely to make her appearance----'
He interrupted me, and asked me as a favour to change the subject; and as I saw that I made him uneasy by my questions, I discontinued them. He walked home with me, and I gave him the money.
'I wonder,' he said, as he pocketed it, 'that you haven't asked me what I wanted the other sixty pounds for.'
'I have been going to ask half a dozen times,' I replied, 'but I thought it might be another of your secrets.'
'It is a secret,' he said with a smile. 'And if you had asked, I shouldn't have told you.'