“Who wants you to go in for a sham wedding, you swab?”
“You do, or I haven’t got the hang of things.”
Voles looked as though he would like to hammer his argument into Fowle with his fists. He forebore. There was too much at stake to allow a sudden access of bad temper to defeat his ends.
He was tired of vagabondage. It was true, as he told his brother long before, that he hungered for the flesh-pots of Egypt, for the life and ease and gayety of New York. An unexpected vista had opened up before him. When he came back to the East his intention was to squeeze funds out of Meiklejohn wherewith to plunge again into the outer wilderness. Now events had conspired to give him some chance of earning a fortune quickly, had not the irony of fate raised the winsome face and figure of Winifred as a bogey from the grave to bar his path.
So he choked back his wrath, and shoved the decanter of spirits across the table to his morose companion. They were sitting in the hall of Gateway House, about the hour that Carshaw and the detective, tired by their weary hunt through East Orange, sought the inn.
“Now look here, Fowle,” he said, “don’t be a poor dub, and don’t kick at my way of speaking. Por Dios! man, I’ve lived too long in the sage country to scrape my tongue to a smooth spiel like my—my friend, the Senator. Let’s look squarely at the facts. You admire the girl?”
“Who wouldn’t? A pippin, every inch of her.”
“You’re broke?”
“Well—er—”