“You’ll know soon enough,” Red Gallagher answered. “A matter of five minutes’ talk, to start with. You see that hand-car house?”
“Perfectly well,” Quest assented. “My eyesight is quite normal.”
“Get there, then. I’m a yard behind you and my revolver’s pointing for the middle of your back.”
Quest looked at it anxiously.
“You have the air, my red friend,” he remarked, “of being unaccustomed to those delicate weapons. Do keep your fingers off the trigger. I will walk to the hand-car house and talk to you, with pleasure.”
He sprang lightly down from the road, crossed the few intervening yards and stepped into the hand-car house.
Gallagher and his mate followed close behind. Quest paused on the threshold.
“It’s a filthy dirty hole,” he remarked. “Can’t we have our little chat out here? Is it money you want?”
Gallagher glanced around. Then with an ugly push of the shoulder he sent Quest reeling into the shed. His great form blocked the doorway.
“No,” he cried fiercely, “it’s not money I want this time. Quest, you brute, you dirty bloodhound! You sent me to the pen for five years—you with your cursed prying into other people’s affairs. Don’t you remember me, eh? Red Gallagher?”