CHAPTER XXVII
THE END OF THE BEGINNING
It was the following night, and the hour was nine. Old Hosie stood in the sheriff’s office in Galloway County jail, while Jim Nichols scrutinized a formal looking document his visitor had just delivered into his hands.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?” said the old lawyer.
“Yep.” The sheriff thrust the paper into a drawer. “I’ll fetch him right down.”
“Remember, don’t give him a hint!” Old Hosie warned again. “You’re sure,” he added anxiously, “he hasn’t got on to anything?”
“How many more times have I got to tell you,” returned the sheriff, a little irritated, “that I ain’t said a word to him—just as you told me! He heard some of the racket last night, sure. But he thought it was just part of the regular campaign row.”
“All right! All right! Hurry him along then!”
Left alone, Old Hosie walked excitedly up and down the dingy room, whose sole pretension in an æsthetic way was the breeze-blown “yachting girl” of a soap company’s calendar, sailing her bounding craft above the office cuspidor.
The old man grinned widely, rubbed his bony hands together, and a concatenation of low chuckles issued from his lean throat. But when Sheriff Nichols reappeared, ushering in Arnold Bruce, all these outward manifestations of satisfaction abruptly terminated, and his manner became his usual dry and sarcastic one with his nephew.