Their words were lost once more, but Wilson soon heard the sentence,
“I’m with you––with you to the end. But what are you going to get out of this?”
Then for the first time he heard the voice of the other. There was some quality in it that made him start. He could not analyze it, but it had a haunting note as though it went back somewhere in his own past. It made him––without any intention of overhearing the burden of the talk––sit up and listen. It was decidedly the voice of an older man––perhaps a foreigner. But if this were so, a foreigner who had lived long in this country, for the accent consisted of a scarcely perceptible blur. He spoke very slowly and with a cold deliberation that was unpleasant. It was so a judge might pronounce sentence 72 of death. It was unemotional and forbidding. Yet there were little catches in it that reminded Wilson of some other voice which he could not place.
“My friend,” came the voice more distinctly, as though the owner had risen and now faced the closed doors between the two rooms, “my friend, the interests I serve are truly different from yours; you serve sentiment; I, justice and revenge. Yet we shall each receive our reward in the same battle.” He paused a moment. Then he added,
“A bit odd, isn’t it, that such interests as yours and mine should focus at a point ten thousand miles from here?”
“Odd? It’s weird! But I’m getting used to such things. I picked up a chap this morning whose story I wouldn’t have believed a year ago. Now I’ve learned that most anything is possible––even you.”
“I?”
“Yes, you and your heathen army, and your good English, and your golden idol.”
“I object to your use of the word ‘heathen,’” the other replied sharply.
Wilson started from his couch, now genuinely interested. But the two had apparently been moving out while this fag-end of the conversation was going on, for their voices died down until they became but a hum. He fell back again, and before he had time to ponder further Danbury hurried in with a suit of clothes over his arm.