The light presently made itself clear as coming from a gas-jet against the wall. Bowen was quite uncertain about his perspective, but finally decided that he was lying on the floor. Pain in his wrists and ankles told him that, incredible though it seemed, his wrists and ankles were lashed together too tightly for comfort.
“Guess I’m not supposed to be comfortable,” he murmured, with the ghost of a smile.
The murmur produced an effect.
Into the area of gaslight above Bowen appeared a face. It was a plump but chalky face, the face of Oliver Hazard Perry Cheadle. Gone were the thick spectacles and the bland, cherubic expression. In the stead of them there was a leering grin that quite transfigured the erstwhile mineralogist from Arizona.
“Dropped you!” said Mr. Cheadle, with a complete absence of hesitation or culture. “You poor fish! Dropped you like a inner-cent babe, I did! Mebbe Henderson won’t grin when he lamps that mug of yours. But why you don’t carry more cash in your pocket, I don’t see—”
The voice died away, and the livid face. Bowen felt unconsciousness swirling upon him; but before his senses lapsed, he realized that things are seldom what they seem, and that in his first half-amused judgment of Mr. Cheadle he had made a grievous error. Then he fell asleep, entirely satisfied on that point.
When he wakened again he saw through half-closed lids that now it was broad daylight. Hearing the voices of two men in the room, and recognizing both voices, Bowen did not open his eyes fully. Instead, he shut them again and kept them shut for a time.
His head was still hurting, but not with that first keen pain; it was now the dulled, deadened hurt of an old bruise. It no longer dominated him. He had wakened alert, with full memory of what had passed; he was, in short, pretty much himself, except for the cold anger that possessed him. A burning thirst consumed him, but anger dominated it.
And when Bob Bowen was angry to the bottom of his soul, he was not the man to pause over half-way measures, or to ask himself what might happen. He knew what would happen if he got the chance!
“He ain’t wise to the world yet,” said the voice of Cheadle. “Want to stir him up?”