“Do you think he is?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“What do you think of him?”
“I didn’t like his mouth.”
“I don’t take to his mouth, myself,” Hilary said. “But he isn’t a minister in the sense that a priest is a priest. He’s a commercial traveller in an intellectual light co., with a bonus of thirty cents a soul.”
“Did you meet him at the Club?”
“I can’t remember: I may have: I met so many that night. But I think you may put all suspicion of him out of your mind, Pearl, because he comes, really, from Colonel Mackenzie’s office. That Harker man told me that word had been sent to Colonel Mackenzie, about our being threatened. Well, this fellow Brown was in Mackenzie’s office when the message came. It seems that he knows the Pacos and was coming here to see them anyhow, and so he volunteered to bring us back with him to Las Palomas. He arrived in a buggy (at least he calls it a surrey) while we were down by the creek.”
“I am all ready to start for Las Palomas,” she said. “I ran upstairs, after you had gone into the room with him, to pack a few things for both of us. They are in handbags on the ledge in the hall. The only question is, shall we not get out here and go alone? I don’t quite like this Mr. Brown. I think he’s a bad man. His mouth snaps to just like a trap.”
“Well, he is old and alone, and I think that he must certainly have been at Colonel Mackenzie’s.”