"What in the——" I began bewilderedly, when Gordon, with another amazing change of attitude, dropped into a chair and sank his head in his hands. I saw his heavy shoulders quiver. I stared helplessly from him to Kirowan, who seemed equally dumfounded.
"Is he drunk?" I asked.
Kirowan shook his head, and filling a brandy glass, offered it to the man. Gordon looked up with haggard eyes, seized the drink and gulped it down like a man half famished. Then he straightened up and looked at us shamefacedly.
"I'm sorry I went off my handle, O'Donnel," he said. "It was the unexpected shock of you drawing that knife."
"Well," I retorted, with some disgust, "I suppose you thought I was going to stab you with it!"
"Yes, I did!" Then, at the utterly blank expression on my face, he added: "Oh, I didn't actually think that; at least, I didn't reach that conclusion by any process of reasoning. It was just the blind primitive instinct of a hunted man, against whom anyone's hand may be turned."
His strange words and the despairing way he said them sent a queer shiver of nameless apprehension down my spine.
"What are you talking about?" I demanded uneasily. "Hunted? For what? You never committed a crime in your life."
"Not in this life, perhaps," he muttered.
"What do you mean?"