He had expected to find Merriwell, come to accuse him. Instead, he saw before him Jim Hanlon, a deaf mute, who occasionally did odd jobs around the club. The fellow’s face was distorted with rage, his eyes flashed fire, his slight frame fairly quivered with emotion.
Stovebridge stepped back instinctively.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked harshly. “What are you doing here?”
As the clubman spoke the deaf mute’s eyes were fixed upon his lips. Evidently he understood what the other said, for his own mouth writhed and twisted in his desperate, futile efforts to give voice to his emotion.
The next instant he snatched a scrap of soiled brown paper from his pocket and produced the stub of a pencil.
Stovebridge watched him with a vague uneasiness as he scrawled a few words and then thrust the paper into the clubman’s hand.
“Somebudy run over Amy an kill her.”
As he deciphered the illiterate sentence, Stovebridge shivered. Until that moment he had forgotten that this fellow was the child’s brother. What was he about to do? He looked as though he were capable of anything. Above all, how much did he know?
Looking up, Brose met the fellow’s eyes fixed fiercely on his own. He shivered again.
“Yes,” he said, with an effort at calmness. “I heard about it. It’s too bad.”