Harding pulled off the wig and beard and leered across at him. “Does that help you out any?”
Gasset sprang to his feet with a terror-oath choking him and retreated backward to the door, hand on weapon.
“Don’t you do it, Jim!” he gasped. “Don’t, I say. I never meant to hurt her—any of ’em will swear to that!”
Harding struck a match and relighted his cigar. He did it with leisurely thoroughness, turning the match this way and that and ignoring his quarry much as a cat ignores a mouse which can by no means escape. Gasset stood as one fascinated, watching every movement of the slim fingers and feeling blindly behind him for the knob of the door. Whereat Harding laughed mockingly and pointed to the bottle on the table.
“You had better come back here and take a little more of the same to stiffen your nerve, Ike. You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn just now.”
Gasset found the doorknob finally and breathed freer when it yielded under his hand. “Give me a show for my life, Jim!” he begged, widening the opening behind him by stealthy half inches. “It ain’t worth much, but, by God, I want it for a little while yet!”
Harding laughed again. “What is the matter with you? You would have been a dead man long ago if I had wanted to drop you. Come back here and finish your drink.”
Having more than once set his life over against his thirst, Gasset did it once again, filling his glass with hands that shook, and swallowing the drunkard’s portion at a gulp. The liquor steadied him a little and he sat down.
“Then you ain’t out gunning for me?” he ventured.
“No; what made you think I was?”