The cook dove for a box in a corner and returned with a cloth sack, bulging. He watched while Corrigan filled the pipe, and grinned while his guest was lighting it.
“Carson’ll be ravin’ today for forgettin’ his pipe. He must have left it layin’ on the table this mornin’—him bein’ in such a rush to get down, to the explosion.”
“It’s Carson’s, eh?” Corrigan surveyed it with casual interest. “Well,” after taking a few puffs “—I’ll say for Carson that he knows how to take care of it.”
He left shortly afterward, laying the pipe on the table where he had found it. Five minutes later he was in Judge Lindman’s presence, leaning over the desk toward the other.
“I want you to issue a warrant for Patrick Carson. I want him brought in here for examination. Charge him with being an accessory before the fact, or anything that seems to fit the case. But throw him into the cooler—and keep him there until he talks. He knows who broke into the dynamite shed, and therefore he knows who did the dynamiting. He’s friendly with Trevison, and if we can make him admit he saw Trevison at the shed, we’ve got the goods. He warned Trevison the other day, when I had the deputies lined up at the butte, and I found his pipe this morning near the door of the dynamite shed. We’ll make him talk, damn him!”
Banker Braman had closed the door between the front and rear rooms, pulled down the shades of the windows, lighted the kerosene lamp, and by its wavering flicker was surveying his reflection in the small mirror affixed to one of the walls of the building. He was pleased, as the fatuous self-complacence of his look indicated, and carefully, almost fastidiously dressed, and he could not deny himself this last look into the mirror, even though he was now five minutes late with his appointment. The five minutes threatened to become ten, for, in adjusting his tie-pin it slipped from his fingers, struck the floor and vanished, as though an evil fate had gobbled it.
He searched for it frenziedly, cursing lowly, but none the less viciously. It was quite by accident that when his patience was strained almost to the breaking point, he struck his hand against a board that formed part of the partition between his building and the courthouse next door, and tore a huge chunk of skin from the knuckles. He paid little attention to the injury, however, for the agitating of the board disclosed the glittering recreant, and he pounced upon it with the precision of a hawk upon its prey, snarling triumphantly.
“I’ll nail that damned board up, some day!” he threatened. But he knew he wouldn’t, for by lying on the floor and pulling the board out a trifle, he could get a clear view of the interior of the courthouse, and could hear quite plainly, in spite of the presence of a wooden box resting against the wall on the other side. And some of the things that Braman had already heard through the medium of the loose board were really interesting, not to say instructive, to him.
He was ten minutes late in keeping his appointment. He might have been even later without being in danger of receiving the censure he deserved. For the lady received him in a loose wrapper and gracefully disordered hair, a glance at which made Braman gasp in unfeigned admiration.