He was at times profane and impecunious, and he had been shifted from one boarding-house to another till at last, having exhausted credit in Lebanon, he had found a room in the house of old Madame Thibadeau in Manitou. She had taken him in because, in years gone by, he had nursed her only son through an attack of smallpox on the Siwash River, and somehow Osterhaut had always paid his bills to her. He was curiously exact where she was concerned. If he had not enough for his week’s board and lodging, he borrowed it, chiefly of Jowett, who used him profitably at times to pass the word about a horse, or bring news of a possible deal.
“It’s a penitentiary job, Jowett,” Ingolby repeated. “I didn’t think Marchand would be so mad as that.”
“Say, it’s all straight enough, Chief,” answered Jowett, sucking his unlighted cigar. “Osterhaut got wind of it—he’s staying at old Mother Thibadeau’s, as you know. He moves round a lot, and he put me on to it. I took on the job at once. I got in with the French toughs over at Manitou, at Barbazon’s Tavern, and I gave them gin—we made it a gin night. It struck their fancy—gin, all gin! ‘Course there’s nothing in gin different from any other spirit; but it fixed their minds, and took away suspicion.
“I got drunk—oh, yes, of course, blind drunk, didn’t I? Kissed me, half a dozen of the Quebec boys did—said I was ‘bully boy’ and ‘hell-fellow’; said I was ‘bon enfant’; and I said likewise in my best patois. They liked that. I’ve got a pretty good stock of monkey-French, and I let it go. They laughed till they cried at some of my mistakes, but they weren’t no mistakes, not on your life. It was all done a-purpose. They said I was the only man from Lebanon they wouldn’t have cut up and boiled, and they was going to have the blood of the Lebanon lot before they’d done. I pretended to get mad, and I talked wild. I said that Lebanon would get them first, that Lebanon wouldn’t wait, but’d have it out; and I took off my coat and staggered about—blind-fair blind boozy. I tripped over some fool’s foot purposely, just beside a bench against the wall, and I come down on that bench hard. They laughed—Lord, how they laughed! They didn’t mind my givin’ ‘em fits—all except one or two. That was what I expected. The one or two was mad. They begun raging towards me, but there I was asleep on the bench-stony blind, and then they only spit fire a bit. Some one threw my coat over me. I hadn’t any cash in the pockets, not much—I knew better than that—and I snored like a sow. Then it happened what I thought would happen. They talked. And here it is. They’re going to have a strike in the mills, and you’re to get a toss into the river. That’s to be on Friday. But the other thing—well, they all cleared away but two. They were the two that wanted to have it out with me. They stayed behind. There was I snoring like a locomotive, but my ears open all right.
“Well, they give the thing away. One of ‘em had just come from Felix Marchand and he was full of it. What was it? Why, the second night of the strike your new bridge over the river was to be blown up. Marchand was to give these two toughs three hundred dollars each for doing it.”
“Blown up with what?” Ingolby asked sharply.
“Dynamite.”
“Where would they get it?”
“Some left from blasting below the mills.”
“All right! Go on.”