“I wasn’t spying upon you. Why should I?”
“You’re a liar—you was spyin’ upon me!”
Douglas’s steel-gray eyes flashed and his nostrils dilated. For a few moments he glared hard at the other—his thin lips compressed. Then he said with icy calmness:
“Bradford—if that be your name—you have mistaken the mettle of the man to whom you applied that term. Let me warn you. Put a curb upon your hasty tongue—or stand ready to defend yourself. Your bluster didn’t frighten me last night—nor does it now.”
“What—what do you mean?” Bradford faltered, recoiling a step.
“You know well what I mean,” Ross went on quietly. “You’re not what you seem. You’re masquerading. For what purpose I don’t know.”—Bradford’s face brightened; he was recovering his equanimity.—“You’re an educated man—you may be a gentleman and a patriot.”
“I might return the compliment,” the older man interrupted sneeringly. “You, too, are an educated man. Perhaps you are masquerading—you are so ready to accuse others. At any rate, I know less of you than you do of me. I don’t know your name, even.”
“I’m not certain that I know yours,” Ross replied meaningly.
An expression of alarm flitted across Bradford’s scarred face, but he answered promptly: