"There ain't no lawyer in town," he boomed sourly.
"Isn't there a Judge Pursuivant in the neighborhood?" I asked, remembering something that Susan had told me.
"He don't practise law," O'Bryant grumbled, and his beaked face slid out of sight.
I turned to the table, idly gathered up the cards into a pack and shuffled them. To steady my still shaky fingers, I produced a few simple sleight-of-hand effects, palming of aces, making a king rise to the top, and springing the pack accordion-wise from one hand to the other.
"I'd sure hate to play poker with you," volunteered O'Bryant, who had come again to gaze at me.
I crossed to the grating and looked through at him. "You've got the wrong man," I said once more. "Even if I were guilty, you couldn't keep me from talking to a lawyer."
"Well, I'm doing it, ain't I?" he taunted me. "You wait until tomorrow and we'll go to the county seat. The sheriff can do whatever he wants to about a lawyer for you."
He ceased talking and listened. I heard the sound, too—a hoarse, dull murmur as of coal in a chute, or a distant, lowing herd of troubled cattle.
"What's that?" I asked him.
O'Bryant, better able to hear in the corridor, cocked his lean head for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. "Sounds like a lot of people talking, out in the square," he replied. "I wonder——"