“Damn it, I am your friend.”
“I’m not sorry I held to you as long as I could,” Wint went on impassively. “It’s a good thing to have faith, even in—false friends. But—I know you now, Routt. You’ve made me drunk, played on the worst in me, slandered me, tricked me, played your part in this black thing to-night.” He hesitated, and Routt started to speak, but Wint cut in.
“Are you—responsible for Hetty, Jack?” he asked.
“Am I?” Routt demanded. “Why, damn you, you said yourself....”
“If I thought you were,” Wint told him evenly. “If I thought you had done that to her.... She was a nice girl. Clean. I think I’d take you by the throat, Routt, and kill you here.”
Routt cried angrily: “You’re crazy. What the hell! You said yourself that you....”
“In fact,” Wint told him, “unless you go away, I am going to hurt you—even now. Without being sure. Hurt you as badly as I can.”
Routt started to speak; then Wint’s eyes caught his and silenced him. He stood for a moment, staring at the other.
And his eyes fell. He looked around gropingly for his hat, and he put it on. He went past Wint at the door; and he went past quickly, as though afraid of what Wint might do.
He went along the hall and down the stairs without speaking again.