"Perdition, certainly, colonel; there I perfectly agree with you. But the rest of your sentence is wrong; I don't trifle with you."
"What in the fiend's name do you mean?"
"Nothing in the name of any absent friend of ours. I mean simply that you may go to—Mexico!"
"And—my business——"
"—Can be done just as well, perhaps better, without you. Recollect, if you please, my colonel, that when you were absent with Harrison in the West your great business was done here without you! And done better for that very reason! No one even suspected your agency in that matter. The person most benefited by the death of Eugene Le Noir was far enough from the scene of his murder."
"Hush! Perdition seize you! Why do you speak of things so long past?" exclaimed Le Noir, growing white to his very lips.
"To jog your worship's memory and suggest that your honor is the last man who ought to complain of this delay, since it will be very well for you to be in a distant land serving your country at the time that your brother's heiress, whose property you illegally hold, is got out of your way."
"There is something in that," mused Le Noir.
"There is all in that!"
"You have a good brain, Donald."