"You—you don't believe it? with all the three-sheet-poster evidence staring you in the face? Why, great Joash! you must be stark, staring mad—both of you!" he raved. And then to Blacklock: "Are you in it, too, Jerry?"
"I guess I am," returned the collegian, meaning no more than that he felt constrained to stand with the men of his chosen profession.
Wingfield drew a long breath and with it regained the impersonal heights of the unemotional observer. "Of course, it is just as you please," he said, carelessly. "I had a foolish notion I was doing you two a good turn; but if you choose to take the other view of it—well, there is no accounting for tastes. Drink your own liquor and give the house a good name. I'll dig up my day-pay later on: it's cracking good material, you know."
"That is another thing," Ballard went on, still more decisively. "If you ever put pen to paper with these crazy theories of yours for a basis, I shall make it my business to hunt you down as I would a wild beast."
"So shall I," echoed Bromley.
Wingfield rose and put the long-stemmed pipe carefully aside.
"You are a precious pair of bally idiots," he remarked, quite without heat. Then he looked at his watch and spoke pointedly to Blacklock. "You're forgetting Miss Elsa's fishing party to the upper canyon, aren't you? Suppose we drive around to Castle 'Cadia in the car. You can send Otto back after Mr. Bromley later on." And young Blacklock was so blankly dazed by the cool impudence of the suggestion that he consented and left the bungalow with the playwright.
For some little time after the stuttering purr of the motor-car had died away the two men sat as Wingfield had left them, each busy with his own thoughts. Bromley was absently fingering the cartridges from Sanderson's rifle, mute proofs of the truth of the playwright's theories, and Ballard seemed to have forgotten that he had promised Fitzpatrick to run a line for an additional side-track in the railroad yard.
"Do you blame me, Loudon?" he asked, after the silence had wrought its perfect work.
"No; there was nothing else to do. But I couldn't help being sorry for him."