Landon swore. Then suddenly he began to laugh.
"It's quaint," he conceded. "It's damned quaint, Miller. And he did—what?"
Miller shrugged his shoulders.
"Interested himself in the situation, caused a delay which was fatal, for the moment, to our success. He cross-questioned the child and our man had to save himself, alone."
Landon laughed again.
"And he knew, this cousin of mine? He knew whose child it was?"
"Not then, but now, I imagine. He has met him since, at the Tent Club. He has also met your late father-in-law."
"What? The Kite—old Jacob—he's there?"
"Personally superintending a situation which gets daily more impenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade to the defence."
Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on opening and glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately set expression; he assumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limit of his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller's remarks.