“The joke is going to be on you, yet, Ned Saulsby,” he said, “for you’ll find you’re going to part with your land and not get much of a price for it in the end. You had your chance to sell out fair, and didn’t; now you’ll see that there are other ways. That friend of mine was as straight as a string. It would take a smarter man than he was to fool Harvey Jarreth.”
“He was so crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew,” returned the Captain with spirit. “And he has fooled you once, and will likely fool you again. The first time he got you into jail: look out it isn’t the penitentiary you go to after his next visit. He helped to get you out of one just as generously as he will help you out of the other.”
“He felt real bad about my being in jail,” Jarreth maintained heatedly, his temper evidently becoming more and more ruffled.
“You’ve heard from him then?” inquired Captain Saulsby quickly. “And why didn’t you tell that to the people who are still looking for him?”
“It’s not my way to get a friend into trouble,” was the answer. “Yes, I heard from him and he sent me a box of cigars. Have one?”
He reached into his breast pocket, but Captain Saulsby stopped him with a gesture. Cigars were a rare luxury with him, but not to be acquired in any such way as this.
“No, thank you,” he said drily. “I’ve always heard that Germans smoke the worst cigars in the world.”
Harvey Jarreth thrust the proffered gift back into his pocket.
“All right,” he answered briskly. “I’m not the fellow to force things on people that don’t want them. As for Germans, how about that clock-maker that you’re so thick with? And it will be you that will be making me a present before long, Ned Saulsby, making me a present of this land; for the price you’ll get for it will bring it down to about that. You’ve been a careless man about your taxes, Ned, and nothing short of criminal about the way you’ve looked after your title-deeds.” He looked about the garden with an appraising eye, as though it were already his own. “You won’t be planting poppies next year,” he said, “unless you care to plant them on another man’s ground. Well, good morning.” He walked off strutting jauntily, swinging his cane.
“He’s got more need to lean on that stick than to flirt it around like that,” muttered Captain Saulsby. “Ah—h!”