“Very good,” remarked Gorman, advancing with the lighted paper towards the heap of shavings.
Boone sprang towards him, and, seizing his arms, grasped the light and crushed it out.
“What would you do, madman?” he cried. “You can only ruin me, but do you not know that I will have the power to denounce you as a fire-raiser?”
Gorman laughed, and returned to the fireplace, while Boone sat down on a chair almost overcome with terror.
“What! you dare to defy me?” said Gorman, with an air of assumed pity. “A pretty case you would have to make out of it. You fill your shop with combustibles, you warn your tenant upstairs to get out of the premises for a time in a way that must be quite unaccountable to her (until the fire accounts for it), and your own clerk sees you spilling turpentine about the place the day before the fire occurs, and yet you have the stupidity to suppose that people will believe you when you denounce me!”
Poor David Boone’s wits seemed to be sharpened by his despair, for he said suddenly, after a short pause—
“If the case is so bad it will tell against yourself, Gorman, for I shall be certainly convicted, and the insurance will not be paid to you.”
“Ay, but the case is not so bad as it looks,” said Gorman, “if you only have the sense to hold your tongue and do what you are told; for nobody knows all these things but you and me, and nobody can put them together except ourselves—d’ye see?”
“It matters not,” said Boone firmly; “I won’t do it—there!”
Both men leaped up. At the same moment there was a sound as of something falling in the shop. They looked at each other.