“It wasn’t me!” He licked his lips. “Honest, it wasn’t me! I—I don’t know what you’re talking about. I ain’t been out of this room. Honest! Somebody’s trying to put me in wrong. I tell you, I ain’t been out of here all night. I—look!” With sudden, feverish eagerness, as though from an inspiration, he pointed to the paint brush, the palette, and the canvas on the easel. “Look! Look for yourself! You can see for yourself! I’ve been painting.”
And then the Wolf laughed—and it was not a pleasant laugh.
“Yes, you’ve been painting!” he jeered. “Sure, you have! I know that! Only you’ve been painting a damned sight more than you thought you were!”
The revolver muzzle covered Jimmie Dale steadily, unswervingly; in the Wolf’s face was malicious and sardonic mockery—but the Wolf’s eyes were no longer on Jimmie Dale’s face, they seemed curiously intent upon the floor at Jimmie Dale’s feet. Mechanically Jimmie Dale followed their direction—and his eyes, too, held on the floor. For a moment neither spoke. The game was up! His boot top was soaked with blood, and, trickling down the side of the boot, a little crimson stream was collecting in a pool upon the floor.
“You painted some of that on the doorstep!” The Wolf’s taunting laugh held a deadly menace. “And you painted a drop or two of it along the street as you ran. I thought when you bust away from the Spider’s and that cursed gang nosed in that I was going to lose out; but I figured that I had hit you, and I was keeping my eyes skinned to see. And then you commenced to do the drip act—savvy? I was still looking for it when I came out of the lane—you remember, Smarlinghue, don’t you?—you got your memory back, ain’t you?—that I was a bit ahead of the rest of ‘em? It didn’t take a second to spot that on the doorstep, and there’s some more of it in the hall. Damned queer, ain’t it—that it led right to Smarlinghue’s room!” The laugh was gone. The Wolf began to come forward across the room. The snarl was in his voice again. “You come across with those sparklers, and you come across—quick!”
But now Smarlinghue was like a crazed and demented creature, and he shook his fists at the Wolf.
“I won’t! I won’t!” he screamed. “You went there to do the same thing! I had as much right as you! And I got them—I got them! They said he had them there, they were all talking about them to-day, and I got them! I won! They’re mine now! I won’t give them to you! I won’t! I tell you, I won’t!”
“Won’t you?” The Wolf had reached Jimmie Dale, and one of the Wolf’s hands found and shook Jimmie Dale’s throat, while the revolver muzzle pressed hard against Jimmie Dale’s breast. “Oh, I guess you will! D’ye hear about a man being murdered to-day with his face cut up? Oh, you did—eh? Well, I happen to know that man was the Spider, and one of these days, mabbe, the police’ll tumble to who it was, too. Get me? Suppose I call some of that gang back, and show ‘em the painting you’ve done along the hall—eh? And then, by and by, when the bulls get wise, it’ll be yours for the juice route, not just a space or two for cracking a box! Get me again?”
Smarlinghue, struggling weakly, pulled the other’s hand from his throat.
“You—you were there, too, at—at the Spider’s,” he choked craftily. “You’re—you’re in it as—as bad as I am.”