The sight of the two rogues, so inert and mysterious, gives me an added twinge of annoyance. I cut short my converse with the landlord and go up to my room.
Carnes is sitting before a small table, upon which his two elbows are planted; his fingers are twisted in his thick hair, and his head is bent so low over an open book that his nose seems quite ready to plow up the page.
Coming closer, I see that he is glowering over a pictured face in his treasured "rogues' gallery."
"If you want to study Blake Simpson's cranium," I say, testily, "why don't you take the living subject? He's down-stairs at this moment."
"I've been studying the original till my head got dizzy," replies Carnes, pushing back the book and tilting back in his chair. "The fact is, the fellow conducts himself so confoundedly like a decent mortal, that I have to appeal to the gallery occasionally to convince myself that it is Blake himself, and not his twin brother."
I laugh at this characteristic whim, and, drawing the book toward me, carelessly glance from page to page.
Carnes prides himself upon his "gallery." He has a large and motley collection of rogues of all denominations: thieves, murderers, burglars, counterfeiters, swindlers, fly crooks of every sort, and of both sexes.
"They've been here four days now," Carnes goes on, plaintively, "and nothing has happened yet. It's enough to make a man lose faith in 'Bene Coves.' I wonder—"
"Ah!" The exclamation falls sharply from my lips, the "gallery" almost falls from my hands.