“He may talk rough,” she thought; “but so long as the waiter knows that he sent for me he won’t do anything more than that. And if I’m to stay here and play spy I must expect to meet him.”
So she girded up her courage and went to the room which Gopher Gabe used at times, where he would sit giving his orders.
His round, fat, flushed face showed only the utmost kindness as she came into the room after pausing timidly on the threshold. The hour was late—the performance had lasted a long time. She wondered if she was not doing a foolish thing.
“So you came!” he said. “I thought you would.”
He got up, gave her a chair, then closed the door; but she observed that he did not lock it.
“Good show to-night, they tell me,” he observed as he came back, “and a good audience. I suppose the manager raised your pay. He ought to.”
She felt afraid of him; he was so large and strong, such a very giant of a man—his jaws were heavy, his neck thick, his shoulders big and broad. He was a huge, coarse leviathan, and she felt that if he wished he could crush her between his fat, thick fingers. Again the feeling came on her strongly that in mixing in this matter she was putting her life in danger.
There was a slight trembling of her voice when she asked him why he had sent for her.
“Well,” he said, leaning back in his big chair and looking steadily at her, “I understand that you have gone over to my enemies; I wanted to ask you if it was true.”
“Not in the sense you perhaps think,” she assured him, knowing now that White-eyed Moses had heard and told, and that she could not deceive the man before her as to what had passed at the Eagle House.