The Wolf looked down at the dead man. It was almost as though he were reluctant. As though, even with the man dead, he hated that he should escape him. He suddenly looked up into the policeman’s face.
“God! I needed to kill him bad!” he cried. Then with an outburst of bitter feeling: “That feller was hell’s own! A ‘four-flush’! My God! That don’t say haf. Ther’ wasn’t crime enough in the world fer him. He’d kill all the time, if he was sure he’d get away with it. But he was scared. Plumb scared! Say, he wasn’t human. Not from the day his mother got him. I’m sick. Yes. Plumb sick! He’s pulled his ‘four-flush’ on me an’ got away with it.”
Fyles looked into the troubled face.
“Has he?” The Wolf’s response was an impatient gesture, and Fyles shook his head. “You’re alive and free,” he added quietly. “You’ve got your stake and—Annette. You got all the world ahead of you. He’s—dead!”
CHAPTER XIX
THE HILLS
THERE was something wholesome and comforting in the police quarters after the stark hideousness of the scene in the office of the store across the township.
To Stanley Fyles it was an environment that never failed in its appeal. The sink of crime in which all his work lay made the bare walls, the hard chairs, the carpetless floors and rough sleeping blankets seem like luxury of the most superlative quality.
The Wolf was impressed in another direction.
He was sitting in a chair with his moccasined feet thrust up on a cheerfully roaring wood stove. And he was thinking of his last visit to that station.
Fyles had produced a capacious flask of rye whisky. He had poured a stiff “four fingers” into the glass he had carefully wiped with a coarse towel. He left his desk and crossed to the stove, and offered the drink to the Wolf.