“So!” he murmured thoughtfully. “So-o-o!”
And then, to Denny:
“Was there––did he make any comment in particular, when he gave you this?”
The boy’s eyes twinkled.
“He––made several,” he answered. “He said that there was a man at that address––meaning you––that would fall on my neck and weep, if I happened to have the stuff. And he warned me, too, not to think that Jed The Red fought like a school boy, just because he was a second-rater––because he didn’t, nothing like that!”
Hogarty laughed aloud. That sudden, staccato chuckle was almost startling coming from his pale lips. It hushed just as quickly as it had begun.
“Jed The Red, eh?” he reiterated softly, and he began tapping the card with his fingertips. “I see, or at least I am commencing to get a glimmer of those possibilities which Mr. Morehouse may have had in mind. And now I think the one best thing to do would be to call him up, as he has here requested. As soon as you finish dressing Ogden here will show you the rest of the works, if you’d care to look around a little. It is entirely likely that we shall want to talk with you directly.”
He wheeled abruptly toward Ogden who had been listening without a word, the broad grin never leaving his lips. It was the silk-shirted boy to whom Hogarty addressed the rest of that sentence.
“And you,” he said, and his voice shed with astounding completeness all its syllabled nicety. “You try to make yourself useful as well as pestilential. 199 Get him a bit of adhesive for that cut. It looks as bad as though a horse had kicked him there.