“When I need the money, I’ll let you know,” replied the other.
Brenchfield opened the door, and smiling an urbane mayoral “Good afternoon,” that all in the main office could hear, he ushered Phil out.
CHAPTER VI
A Bird to Pluck
As he walked down Main Street toward the Kenora Hotel, where it was his intention to have a bite to eat, Phil congratulated himself inwardly, on the one side, on the more than ordinary success of his gigantic bluff––for he knew that so long as he was able to hold this bogey of a confession as a club over the head of Brenchfield, he was safe from open interference:––on the other side, he cursed his arrant stupidity and childlike simplicity in destroying a document which, even if he never used it, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt his innocence of the crime for which he had been imprisoned.
He tried hard to recollect exactly what had happened that fatal morning after Brenchfield had left the shack on the side of the road at Carnaby, but all was more or less hazy and indistinct. He remembered deciphering the note and crumpling it up in his despair and worry. Later, he recollected gathering up the loose papers and other material evidences of Brenchfield’s guilt, stuffing them into the stove and setting them alight.
As he walked along his musings were brought to an abrupt stop, as his eye caught sight of a tall, straight, picturesque-looking individual coming toward him. The man was dressed in what at one time had been an immaculate sporting suit, but which, in its now battered and tattered state, gave the wearer the look of a bookmaker who had been dragged through a mud puddle and then hung out to dry.