He waited for an answer. Bob was silent.
“Well,” continued Townsend, “what I should like to know is why Seymour was on this road. I can see why you were here, of course. Where was it you did find him? Come!”
Bob stubbornly shook his head. “I have told you—” he began, but the captain interrupted.
“You’ve told me nothing,” he snapped, impatiently. “And you won’t tell more; eh?”
“No.”
“Well, you are foolish. This story that is going around is queer. I don’t know where it comes from, nobody seems to know, but there is talk that you and Seymour were seen down here on this very road that night, long after the show was over, and that you and he were—well, next door to fighting. Having some sort of a row, anyway. Have you heard anything like that?... Humph! No, I guess you haven’t, by the way you look.”
Bob’s face was white. The thing that he had dreaded, had feared might possibly happen, had happened. Ever since that fateful morning, amid his imaginings and forebodings had loomed large the figure of the man, whoever he might be, who had passed along that lower road and interrupted the quarrel between Covell and himself. If that man had recognized them—Bob tried to hope he had not done so. In fact, by this time he had begun to believe that the darkness had prevented recognition on both sides of the road. Now—
He fought to regain composure, even attempted a laugh, but it was a poor attempt.
“Nonsense!” he cried. “Why—what—who says such a fool thing as that?”
“I don’t know who said it first.... There is nothing in it, then?”