“Ah!” It was hardly an exclamation; rather it was a contained commentary. Mr. Blair had noted the exhumed casket. “You might better have taken my offer,” he continued after a pause of some seconds. “I think, sir, you have dug the grave of your own career.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Schlager! Are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. Blair. They’ve broken my wrist and got my gun.”
Mr. Blair took that under consideration. “It doesn’t strike me that you are much of a man-hunter,” he observed judicially. “Who are they?”
“Francis Sedgwick is the other, at your service,” answered the owner of that name.
An extraordinary convulsion of rage distorted the set features of the elderly man.
“You!” he cried. “Haven’t you done enough—without this! I would come on now if hell yawned for me.”
Stricken with amazement at the hatred in the tone, Sedgwick stood staring. But Kent stepped before the advancing man. “This won’t do,” he said firmly. “We can’t any of us afford killing.”
“I can,” contradicted Mr. Blair.