"Let me smell that stuff, Maggie," said Miss Jennie sternly. One sniff was sufficient. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Margaret Slattery, leading a young man into temptation like this. You may be starting him on the road to perdition. It is just such things as this that—"
"Oh, gosh!" exclaimed Margaret, recovering herself. "Don't you go thinking he's as good as all that. From what he was telling me at breakfast the other day, he used to make the round trip to purgatory every night or so,—only he said it was paradise. Keep your old brandy. He wouldn't like it anyway. Not him! He says he's swallered enough champagne to float the whole American Navy."
"The very idea!" exclaimed Miss Jennie. "Go to your room, Maggie. It's bad enough for you to be stealing but when you make it worse by lying, I—"
"I'm quitting you in the morning," said Margaret, her Irish up.
"It won't be the first time," said Miss Jennie, imperturbably.
Courtney sat for a long time before the booming little stove. He forgot Margaret Slattery and her mission.
"I guess it took her off her feet," he reflected aloud. "That's the way with some of them. They get panicky. Go all to pieces when they find out what it really means to let go of themselves. God! She's wonderful!" He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes; a smile settled on his lips. For a long time he sat there, fondling the memory of that blissful moment. A slight frown made its appearance after a while. He opened his eyes. His thoughts had veered. "What rotten luck! If it could only have been Alix instead of that—" He arose abruptly and began pacing the floor. After a long time he sighed resignedly. "I mustn't forget to telephone her tomorrow." Then he began to undress for bed.
He looked at his knee. There was a deep, irregular scar on the outside of the leg, while on the inside a knuckle-like protuberance of considerable size provided ample evidence of a badly shattered joint, long since healed. Along the thigh there was another wicked looking scar, with several smaller streaks and blemishes of a less pronounced character. He placed some hot compresses on the joint, gave it a vigorous massage, and, before getting into bed, worked it up and down for several minutes.
"Clumsy ass!" he muttered. "Next time you'll watch your step. Don't go jumping over fences in the dark. Gad, for a couple of minutes I thought I'd put it on the blink for keeps."
The next morning, up in the woods above Alix's house, the crude black mask was found, and some distance farther on an old grey cap, from which the lining and sweatband had been ripped. The search for the man, however, was fruitless. Constable Foss visited the camp of a gang of Italian railroad labourers near Hawkins and was reported to be bringing several indignant "dagoes" over to Windomville to see if Courtney or the two ladies could identify them. He was very careful to choose men with thick black moustaches.