"I owe you a great deal for bringing me this information, Mr.
Stobo—more than I can repay. But perhaps you would let me—"
He stopped suddenly, for the man had started backing off down the entryway, a dull unaccustomed color showing in his grimy face.
"You didn't mean it, Mr. Varney! Why, how'd I look my missus in the face—let alone myself—and tell her I took money off'n you—"
He disappeared out of the back door, and Varney, feeling uncomfortable and disproportionately touched, put his spurned bill back in his pocket. Hackley, now perceiving that his guest's visitor was gone, turned his back on the speechmaking and hurried forward solicitously.
"I could 'a' hit that Stobo sneakin' in a-botherin' and a-'noyin' you," he said in tones of great sympathy. "I know how it is, Mr. Varney. Bit of a inverlid myself, I am—no health and no constitootion whatsomever, sir. Feelin' a leetle stiddier now, are you? Better lie down on my parlor sofy a while and git rested up nice, hadn't ye?—many's the day I've lazied there, Lord knows, tryin' f'r to coddle my strength back."
Varney regretfully declined the offer. In fact, he must be going at once, he said, as he had a rather important business engagement; and would Mr. Hackley kindly show him the quiet back-exit to the street and the outer world?
Hackley, a tireless host, re-urged the charms of his sofy and cool well-water for invalids; but his guest remained politely firm. So there, on the little rear veranda, the two men parted with mutual esteem: Varney expressing sincere thanks for all Mr. Hackley's courtesies; Hackley compassionate over Mr. Varney's impaired constitution, but boggling over what regrets might haply betray him into the grip of the law's long arm.
Varney traversed the clothes-hung backyard, came out into the dingy alley, and made rapidly for the cross-street, where a string of carriages showed that "the quality" of Hunston was not without interest in the day's proceedings. He did not see the carriages; to himself he seemed suddenly to walk in a great and silent solitude. There was noise enough about him, in all conscience, for every sentence that fell from Hare's lips was punctuated by a salvo; but the tumult beat itself to stillness against the closed fastness of his mind.
Under his eye, half way down the block to which he drew near, rose the weatherworn flank of the Palace Hotel. Somewhere within the ugly pile was his mortal enemy Higginson, trapped to his reckoning at last. Within five minutes they two would stand face to face; and he had long since promised himself that Higginson would remember the meeting for as long as he lived. A moment ago, the thought had filled him with a strange exhilaration: the prospect of a final accounting with the intriguing fly-by-night who had wronged him past all forgiveness had set his blood to leaping. But, exactly because that wrong went so deep, his pleasurable excitement ebbed faster than it had mounted. The wound that he had had from Higginson was one that no vengeance would heal. And with the recurrence of this knowledge his battle-joy flickered and went out like a spent match, and the little alley was a war-list no longer but a stretch without end of dry and dusty years….
"I was lookin' for yer, Mist' Varney," said a husky, abashed voice.