The incident puzzled Burton, and made him somewhat uncomfortable. High Ridge was a place of mysteries. Also, he reflected, it was a place of very few policemen. Was his pursuer a common street bandit, with designs on his purse, or was he connected with the Underwood mystery and the warning that had been sent him at the hotel? The thought made him square his jaw. Did they think to frighten him off? He would let them see!
He had turned aside from his most direct route to the hotel in this experiment, and he now found himself in a street with which he was not familiar, though he knew the general location. He turned in the direction where his hotel must be, and was glad to hear no longer the sound of feet behind him. Suddenly from the shadow of a large business block, a man sprang out from a driveway and jumped at him. The attack was so sudden and so fierce and Burton was so unprepared that for a moment he was borne backward and almost carried to the ground. How he recovered himself he could not have told. The primitive instinct of the fighting animal awoke within him, and perhaps some of the acquired skill of his college days came back. He knew that he was fighting for his life, for the hand that he had clutched held a knife, and there was no mistaking the vicious energy that his assailant was exerting. Burton answered with a strength that he had not known he possessed. He felt the man's body yielding inch by inch under his clutch, and then suddenly it slipped away from his hands, and the man darted off and disappeared into the night, leaving Burton panting and dishevelled and very much amazed. He had never before had occasion to defend his life,--he had always taken for granted that civilization would take that burden off the hands of any decent man. And yet here, in a quiet little village, where he was practically unknown, he had been assailed by some one who really wanted to kill him. He was quite sure that the man's object had not been merely thievish. His attack was personally vicious.
Suddenly he remembered how he had kept Selby cooling his heels in Miss Hadley's back parlor while he amused himself with Miss Hadley, and the satisfaction he had taken in the situation faded into a rather serious inquiry. Selby was a man of violent temper who had no occasion to love him. But did he have occasion to hate him to the death? If so, there could be but one reason. He feared his investigations.
[CHAPTER XV]
AN ODD KNOT
Burton awoke the next morning with a consuming desire to go at once and look at Selby. If it really had been he who had been guilty of that midnight attack, was it in human power for him to conceal all trace of his consciousness? Burton recalled the note of warning which had been left for him at the clerk's desk, and afterwards abstracted from his room. Selby lodged in the hotel, and had therefore the advantage of position. He could have come and gone without attracting attention. A stranger could not. Certainly he must take a look at Selby.
He found him at his desk in the rear of a large and crowded room which appeared to be a combined office and workroom. He looked up as Burton entered, but scowled instead of nodding, and went on talking to a workman who was receiving instructions. Burton merely nodded and took a chair to wait. Selby gave him plenty of time for it. Burton could not help feeling, after awhile, that he was being ignored for the express purpose of insult, and to remove the sting of the enforced waiting he got up and sauntered across the room to look at a collection of Indian baskets, moccasins, and pipes, fastened against the wall. The specimens were of little intrinsic beauty and less commercial value, but Burton knew something about Indian basketry, and these examples of the common work of the mid-continent tribes interested him. More, they stirred some pulse of thought deep down in his mind. There was some connection,--something,--of which those baskets were trying to remind him. He stared at them so intently that he did not notice that the workman had finally departed, until Selby pushed back his chair, rose, and grudgingly came over to where he stood.
"Looking at my Indian things?" he asked, with an uneasy assumption of civility.
"Yes, they interest me. Where did you get hold of them?"
"Oh, just picked them up. I've been about among the Indians a good deal."