“Pusey,” he said, not at all in the tone that Hale had expected to hear break from him, “Pusey,” he said, “don’t be foolish.”
“Foolish?” repeated Pusey seriously. “Is it so foolish, think you?”
“Damnably foolish,” Garwood replied.
“Pardon me,” Pusey said, “you evidently misunderstood me.”
“Misunderstood you? Didn’t you suggest buying Jim Rankin? You evidently don’t know men.”
“Did I say Jim Rankin?” answered Pusey. “If I did, I meant Jim Rankin’s men.”
“Oh,” Garwood and Hale exclaimed together in a weak, unconvinced note. Garwood looked at Pusey more charitably, and Pusey returned the look by one of subtlest meaning. Thus they stood and gazed at each other for a whole minute, that seemed, in the stillness that dripped into the room, a whole age.
It was, in the end, Hale who spoke.
“We’ll have to do something, turn some sort of a trick, and do it quick. Zeph Bailey ain’t here for nothing!”
Hale had drawn his watch from his pocket.