“Search me,” said Ellis contemptuously. “The ‘Can I Venture,’ ‘Jam Wallahs,’—‘Sacca Bona’s Horse,’ or some irresponsible bunch o’ Bashi-Bazouks, I guess. I’ve never asked him. I think I told you before, Charley, there’s five hundred dollars’ reward for Wilks. If it comes through, so much the better for both of us. I’ll see you sure get your fee an’ expenses in full. In all fairness you’re entitled to half of it, anyway, in consideration of the whisper you gave me in the beginning.”
“Didn’t think you fellows were allowed to accept rewards,” said the doctor.
“Well, we’re not, as a rule,” Ellis admitted. “But now an’ again they make exceptions when the crime has been committed outside our usual jurisdiction. Take that hold-up of the C.P.R. passenger train near Ducks in B.C. that time, by those three chaps—Bill Miner, Shorty Dunn, an’ Lewis Colquhoun. Five of our men got rewarded for nailing them. Let’s see! there was Wilson, Shoebotham, Peters, Stewart, an’ Browning. They got thirteen hundred an’ fifty apiece for that job. But we never receive it direct. It has to come through the Commissioner. Generally it’s turned into the Fine Fund at Headquarters, an’ the grant is made from there.”
“All right,” said Musgrave indifferently, as he opened the door. “If it does come through—why, all well and good, though I’m sorry, in a way, for the poor devil.”
With his hand on the knob, he turned, the ghost of a smile flitting across his strong intellectual face.
“Guess you weren’t far out in your remarks just now,” he said. “Seems the transformation’s begun already. Afraid we’ve come down to Mother Earth again with a vengeance. Remember Sir Noel Paton’s great picture—‘The Man with the Muckrake,’ Ellis? So long!”
“So long,” the other answered mechanically, without turning his head.
And the door closed softly.
CHAPTER XV
O Memory, ope thy mystic door!
O dream of youth, return!
And let the lights that gleamed of yore
Beside this altar burn!
—Gray