“Good hoss?”
“You betcha.”
“Huh!”
Pause.
“You no catchee horse blanket, hey?”
“No!” said the Chinaman, whose manner instantly changed. In this brief conversation he had classified Drazk, and classified him correctly. “You catchee him, though—some hell, too—you stickee lound here. Beat it,” and Drazk found the kitchen door closed in his face.
Drazk wandered slowly around the side of the house, and was not above a surreptitious glance through the windows. They revealed nothing. He followed a path out by a little gate. His ruse had proven a blind trail, and there was nothing to do but go down to the stables, take the horse blanket from the peg where he had hung it, and set out again for the South Y.D.
As he turned a corner of the fence the sight of a young woman burst upon him. She was hatless and facing the sun. Drazk, for all his admiration of the sex, had little eye for detail. “A sort of chestnut, about sixteen hands high, and with the look of a thoroughbred,” he afterwards described her to Linder.
She turned at the sound of his footsteps, and Drazk instantly summoned a smirk which set his homely face beaming with good humor.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said, with an elaborate bow. “I am Mr. Drazk—Mr. George Drazk—Mr. Transley’s assistant. No doubt he spoke of me.”