"Did he try to persecute you?"
"No, not then. I was afraid of only one thing: that he might drink too much and—and talk. Part of the fear was realized. He saw me that Sunday night in the Bullard. That was why he was trying to fight the hotel people—because they wouldn't let him come up-stairs. I saw what you did, and I was sorry. I couldn't help feeling that in some way it would prove to be the beginning of a tragedy."
"You saw no more of him then?"
"No; I neither saw him nor heard of him until about a month ago when he came west with a man named Bullock—a New York attorney. I didn't know why he came, but I thought it was to annoy me."
"And he has annoyed you?"
"Until this night he has never missed an opportunity of doing so when he could dodge Cousin Basil. Caring nothing for me himself, he has taken violent exceptions to my friendship with you and with Upton Van Britt, though that is chiefly when he has been drinking too much. It was his taunting boast yesterday at the capital that led me to telegraph Cousin Basil and Upton Van Britt about your trip to Strathcona. He knew that you were going to the gold camp, and he declared to me that you'd never come back alive."
"But to-night," the boss persisted. "What did he want to-night?"
"He wanted to—to use me. He said that he had 'put something across' for his uncle, that he had gotten into trouble for it, and that—to use his own phrase again, you were the man who would try to 'get his goat.'"
"And his object in telling you this?"
"Was entirely worthy of the man. He asked me, or rather I should say, commanded me, to 'choke you off.' And, of course, he added the insult. He said I was the one who could do it."