Johnny Dice lay abed the following morning until half past seven o’clock, shamelessly reveling in his freedom from toil. At five Hobe and the others, Tony included, had trooped down to breakfast. Fifteen minutes later the Diamond-Bar boys had headed for the shipping pens to resume where they had left off the previous evening. Tony, helpless with nothing to do, waited with growing impatience for the appearance of the prodigal.
Specters of doubt, tantalizing ghosts of indecision troubled the sleeping Mr. Dice. His pugnacious face wore a frown. Every now and then his mouth would straighten and his jaw would shoot out to an alarming prominence. Maybe a dramatic gesture with his hand would follow. Johnny seemed continually to lose the decision in this silent fighting, for he would try it first on one side and then on the other.
Big Hobe had always found a bucketful of cold water a most excellent antidote for these symptoms; but Johnny was suffering from more than just too much sleep. He had closed his eyes convinced that he could put his hand on the guilty man. His deductions had been honest, sensible. Old man Kent was as guilty! Subconsciously, doubt had crept into his mind.
Jackson Kent had become such a meek, painfully righteous person these last few years that he seemed to lack the spinal stiffening a killer must possess. If he had been accused of taking nickels out of the collection box, one might have believed it of him; but murder? No! You’d have to have the reason for the crime, the whole, inside story of it before you could go out and expect men to believe you. Jackson Kent was a rich man, a figure of some importance in Shoshone County politics.
“Yes, we grant all that,” whispered perverse little fiends in Johnny’s ear, “but isn’t it men like Kent who, free from popular suspicion, commit crimes of this sort? Wasn’t his position in the county, his very respectability his best safeguard?”
Wild-eyed, Johnny sat up suddenly, his red head shaking doggedly. He looked about the room as if searching for the little devils that had romped through his sleep.
A grunt and an indulgent smile followed as he threw back the covers. “I’m sufferin’ from that psychic stuff,” he muttered. “Or is it food I need?”
His watch in his hands, he went to the door and called down to Vin: “Hey, Vin! Give me food or give me death! I’ll be there muy pronto, muchachito.”
Vinnie had a steaming breakfast on the table when Johnny entered the dining room. “By Chris’, Johnny, you sleep lak’ meel-li-on-aire. How you theenk I run theese bus’ness, breakfuss h’eight o’clock?”
“Aw, go on, you old dude!” Johnny laughed. “I’ll be borrowin’ money from you before I git through.”