“You ain’t half the shot you think you be, sir! There’s lots o’ marksmen in this world can’t even make a gun go off, an’ yet they can’t miss fire in the next world. You’re one of ’em. I took the money, I tell ye, an’ I can prove it by showin’ it to you, in two minutes!”
The old man, turning, started for the stairs.
“Where are you going now?” demanded Filhiol.
“To git that there money!”
“Your own savings, no doubt? To shield Hal with?”
“The money I stole, an’ don’t ye fergit it neither!” retorted Ezra with a look so menacing that the doctor ventured no reply. In silence he watched the old man, wet clothes still clinging to him, plod up the stairs and disappear.
“Lord, if this isn’t a tangled web,” thought Filhiol, “what is? I ought never to have come. And yet I’m needed every minute, if a terrible catastrophe is to be turned aside!”
His heart contracted at thought of the inevitable shock to Captain Briggs if he should discover the theft. Could Ezra conceal it, even with his savings? And, if he could, would it not be best to let him? Would not anything be preferable to having the captain’s soul wrung out of him? Sudden hate against the cause of all this misery flared up in him.
“Great God!” he muttered. “If I only had that Hal for a patient, just one hour!”
The footsteps of Ezra, descending again, roused him. In Ezra’s hand was gripped a roll of bills, old and tattered for the most part—a roll that counted up to some five hundred and thirty dollars, or to within about forty dollars of every cent Ezra had in the world. More than fifteen years of hard-earned savings lay in that roll. This money Ezra had hastily dug from under a lot of old clothes in his trunk. And now he shook it before the eyes of Filhiol, eager to sacrifice it.