“S’long!”
“Jock Drones—huh!” Buck repeated, turning into the lamp-lit kitchen where Slip was sniffing the coffee pot.
“Friend of mine just stopped,” Buck whispered. “There’s a detective coming down out of the Ohio. Told me to pass the word around. He’s after somebody by the name of Drones, Dock or Jock Drones.”
Slip started, turned white, and his jaws parted. Buck’s eyes opened a little wider.
“S’all right, Slip! Keep your money in your belt, to be ready to run or swim. It’s a long river.”
Slip could not trust himself to speak. Buck, patting him on the shoulder, went on into the card room and closed the kitchen door behind him, drawing the aisle curtains shut, too, so that no one would go back until Slip had recovered his equilibrium.
CHAPTER XII
Augustus Carline instinctively slowed down his motorboat and took to looking at the wide river, its quivering, palpitating surface; its vistas at which he had to “look twice to see the end,” as the river man says with whimsical accuracy.