“I have seen the real Howard Milmarsh do just what this fellow is doing now. Of course, that does not prove that they are the same person, but it is an indication. I have not quite made up my mind yet.”
For another fifteen minutes the young man at the table sat there holding ice to his forehead. Occasionally he drank some water from the carafe on the table.
At last he got up and walked the length of the room and back, as if to test his ability to do it without staggering.
He was fairly successful, and he uttered a mirthless laugh as he dropped again into his seat.
“The blackguards!” he burst out suddenly. “The infernal, low-bred rascals! They can’t even be decent crooks! This game they’ve played on the poor devils who are paying for that swamp land is worse than stealing the pennies from a blind man’s dog!”
He took from a pocket the ten hundred-dollar notes and gazed at them thoughtfully.
“For two cents I’d put a match to these. I may not be a saint, but, by the big bull of Bashan, I never was a robber of widows and orphans. At least, not when I knew it!”
He reached over to the silver match box on the table, and savagely struck a light. He held the lighted match till it burned up brightly, and then, with the notes in his left hand and the match in his right, laughed again in the hollow way he had before.
“Look!” whispered Chick excitedly. “The dub is going to burn up a thousand dollars!”
But he didn’t do it. Just as he was about to touch the flame to the money, he shook his head, and, with another dry chuckle, blew out the match and dropped it in an ash tray.