“You meant to push me off Ragged Rock, perhaps?” asked Bayard quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I see—it would not have been difficult. A man can be taken unawares in the dark, and as you say, there would have been no witnesses.”
“You come home too soon,” growled Ben. “I counted on getting away and bein’ here to welcome you, and nobody the wiser; d—— them two women! I supposed you’d stay awhile with your girl. A man would, in our kind of folks. Lord! you don’t seem to belong to any kind of folks that I can see. I don’t know what to make of you. —— you! —— you! —— you! I’d like to see you go yellin’ and bub—ble—in’ down to your drownin’! I’m heavier’n you be, come to the tug. I could do it now, inside of ten minutes.”
“And hang for it in ten months,” observed Bayard, smiling.
“I could get a dozen men to swear to an alibi!” cried Trawl. “You ain’t so popular in this town as to make that a hard job. You’ve got the whole liquor interest ag’in’ you. Lord! the churches would back ’em, too, that’s the joke of it!”
He laughed savagely.
Bayard made no reply. He had winced in the dark at the words. They were worse than the grip at his throat.
“When you get ready, Ben, suppose you explain what you have against me?” he suggested, after an uncomfortable pause.
“You’ve took my girl!” roared Ben.
“Your girl? Your girl?”
Bayard gasped, from the sheer intellectual shock of the idea.