“Safe enough, I guess—a little wild, at times, maybe; but he's not such a fool as to lose what he'd never have a chance of getting again.”
“Then,” said Gilbert, “it's hardly likely that he's the same friend you took such a fancy to, at the Hammer-and-Trowel, last spring?”
Alfred Barton started as if he had been shot, and a deep color spread over his face. His lower jaw slackened and his eyes moved uneasily from side to side.
“Who—who do you mean?” he stammered.
The more evident his embarrassment became, the more Gilbert was confirmed in his suspicion that there was some secret understanding between the two men. The thing seemed incredible, but the same point, he remembered had occurred to Martha Deane's mind, when she so readily explained the other circumstances.
“Barton,” he said, sternly, “you know very well whom I mean. What became of your friend Fortune? Didn't you see him at the tavern, last Monday morning?”
“Y-yes—oh, yes! I know who he is now, the damned scoundrel! I'd give a hundred dollars to see him dance upon nothing!”
He clenched his fists, and uttered a number of other oaths, which need not be repeated. His rage seemed so real that Gilbert was again staggered. Looking at the heavy, vulgar face before him,—the small, restless eyes, the large sensuous mouth, the forehead whose very extent, in contradiction to ordinary laws, expressed imbecility rather than intellect, it was impossible to associate great cunning and shrewdness with such a physiognomy. Every line, at that moment, expressed pain and exasperation. But Gilbert felt bound to go a step further.
“Barton,” he said, “didn't you know who Fortune was, on that day?”
“N-no—no! On that day—NO! Blast me if I did!”