He laughed very quietly, and as though to make his own words good he put up the shutters on the only window the miserable den of a place possessed. We were in a kind of twilight now, in a miserably furnished shanty, with the paper peeling off the walls and the fire-grate all rusted and the very boards broken beneath our feet. And I believed he had a pistol in his pocket, and that he would use it if I so much as lifted my hand.
"Oh," says he presently, and in a mocking tone which ran down my back like cold water from a spout. "Oh, you're a brave boy, Britten, and when you spread yourself about the tecs, I like you. Now, see here, did I try to murder that girl or did I not? Fair question and fair answer. Am I the man the police are looking for, or is it another?"
I answered him straight out.
"The pair of you are in it. You know that well enough—and the reward is five hundred, to say nothing of what the police are offering."
"You mean to have that reward, Britten."
"If I can get it fairly, yes."
"As good as to say you'll walk straight out of here and give me up?"
"Unless you can tell me you didn't do it."
He swung round on his heel and looked at me as savage as a devil out of hell.
"I did it, Britten—Barney, my mate, had nothing to do with it. Didn't you see him sweat the night you picked us up? Barney's a tender-foot at this game; he'll never cut a figure in the 'Calendar,' why, not if he lives to be a chimpanzee in the human menagerie. Barney ought to be holding forth in the tabernacle round the corner. Him do it—why, he couldn't kill a calf."