"I'd make it hot for him if I did--doing a thing like this in my house, in my busiest season!"
"There's plenty who might have done it--plenty. No one ever had much love for him--and small blame to them. Why I only heard, with my own ears, a man say to him this afternoon: 'By God, Emmett, for two pins, I'd have your life'--sounded as if he meant it too."
"Perhaps someone gave him the two pins."
This was the waiter. Whether the remark was meant to be humorous, or merely a suggestion, was not clear. No one heeded him. The personage went on:
"What man was that? Be careful what you say, Mrs Elsey."
"No need for you to tell me to be careful; I can be that without your telling me--as careful as anyone. What I say I heard I did hear--I'm ready to swear to it anywhere, though who the man was I don't know; he was a stranger to me--but I should know him again among a hundred. He was a smallish man, with a sharp, clean-shaven face, and a brown suit, and a white billycock, which he wore a little on one side--he'd something to do with horses, of that I'm sure. But he's not the only one who had a grudge against George Emmett. Who, who had anything to do with him, hadn't? Why, if it comes to that, we'd no cause to love him."
"Now, Mrs Elsey, none of that sort of talk, if you please; that's a sort of talk I won't have. It doesn't follow that because a man has a grudge against another man he wants to kill him."
"Doesn't it? It depends on the man. But whatever did he do it with? I never saw such a sight as he has made of him!"
"Seems as if he did it with a bottle--a champagne bottle."
"He must have hit him a crack, to make a sight of him like that--why, his head's all smashed to pulp."