“You do turn up once in a while, don’t you?” said the solitary diner not too hospitably. “You’re late for dinner, but doubtless Uncle William can find you something. You will have to eat alone. I have some work to do.”
Carfax followed the worker into the front office and, when the lights were turned on, dropped into a chair.
“I don’t want any dinner,” he said. “Or rather I should say, I’m due to show up at Mrs. Caswell’s at the proper dinner-hour.”
Tregarvon had a telegraph pad under his hand and he took time to write a brief message before he said, half-absently: “We keep working-men’s hours here.”
“Which is a delicate way of intimating that I’d better go chase myself and quit bothering you?” put in the intruder with a gentle chuckle. “All right; I’ll vanish presently. But first I’d like to ask if you are still clinging to your fantastic idea of making somebody suffer for the dynamiting?”
“I am; and I don’t see anything fantastic about it. A number of crimes have been committed, and I have no notion of compounding a felony by letting the perpetrators get away. Morgan McNabb is the key to the situation, and I have never understood why you and Judge Birrell turned him loose and gave him a chance to disappear. It has cost me a pretty penny to trace him, but I’ve got him now. He is under arrest in Dallas, Texas.”
“And you are going to have him brought back and given the third degree?”
“Precisely. I have just written the telegram.”
Carfax was feeling in his pockets for his cigarette-case, going about it leisurely as one who would gain time.
“McNabb is only a poor devil of a mountaineer, too ignorant to be held fully accountable, don’t you think?” he ventured at the match-lighting.