The man whom he addressed as “brother” leaned with his hands on the table that separated them. His face was quite ghastly. All his self-control seemed to have deserted him.
“You?” he gasped. “To come here! Are you mad?”
“Need you ask? It will not be the first time you have called me a lunatic, nor will it be the last, I reckon.”
“But the risk, the infernal risk! The police know of you. Rachel is arrested. A detective was here a few hours ago. They are probably watching outside.”
“Bosh!” was the uncompromising answer. “I’m sick of being hunted. Just for a change I turn hunter. Where’s the mazuma you promised Rachel?”
Meiklejohn, using a hand like one in a palsy, produced a pocketbook and took from it a bundle of notes.
“Here!” he quavered. “Now, for Heaven’s sake——”
“Just the same old William,” cried the stranger, seating himself unceremoniously. “Always ready to do a steal, but terrified lest the law should grab him. No, I’m not going. It will be good nerve tonic for you to sit down and talk while you strain your ears to hear the tramp of half a dozen cops in the hall. What a poor fish you are!” he continued, voice and manner revealing a candid contempt, as Meiklejohn did indeed start at the slamming of a door somewhere in the building. “Do you think I’d risk my neck if I were likely to be pinched? Gad! I know my way around too well for that.”
“But you don’t understand,” whispered the other in mortal terror. “By some means the detective bureau may know of your existence. Rachel promised to be close-lipped, but—”
“Oh, take a bracer out of that decanter. At the present moment I am registered in a big Fifth Avenue hotel, a swell joint which they wouldn’t suspect in twenty years.”