“I have taken it up as well as I can. To be frank with you, Mrs. Borton, I know nothing about his job. I'm going along on blind chance, and trying to keep a whole skin.”
The old woman looked at me in amazement.
“Poor boy!” she exclaimed half-pityingly, half-admiringly. “You put your hands to a job you know nothing about, when Henry Wilton couldn't carry it with all his wits about him.”
“I didn't do it,” said I sullenly. “It has done itself. Everybody insists that I'm Wilton. If I'm to have my throat slit for him I might as well try to do his work. I wish to Heaven I knew what it was, though.”
Mother Borton leaned her head on her hand, and gazed on me thoughtfully for a full minute.
“Young man,” said she impressively, “take my advice. There's a train for the East in the mornin'. Just git on board, and never you stop short of Chicago.”
“I'm not running away,” said I bitterly. “I've got a score to settle with the man who killed Henry Wilton. When that score is settled, I'll go to Chicago or anywhere else. Until that's done, I stay where I can settle it.”
Mother Borton caught up the candle and moved it back and forth before my face. In her eyes there was a gleam of savage pleasure.
“By God, he's in earnest!” she said to herself, with a strange laugh. “Tell me again of the man you saw in the alley.”
I described Doddridge Knapp.