“What you got in them pails, Mr. Crosman?” called Du Bois. “Did you forget and bring your lunch?”
“No; it's dynamite.” In a conversational tone.
“It's what? Say, you're fooling!” He drew back as he spoke. The other men looked at one another.
For reply Crosman produced a brown cylinder.
“Good Lord! And I run into that!”
In another moment Halloran and Crosman were alone. Down the alleys, between the piles, around the mill, out the gate—for every hole a man could squeeze through was abruptly pressed into service—the men had disappeared. And when the noise of the scampering feet had died away, Halloran said, with a chuckle: “Here's Du Bois's hat. I'll take it along.” The next morning he found him on the wharf. “You didn't stop for your hat last night, Du Bois. I guess you were called away suddenly.”
The Inspector accepted the hat and pulled it on, drew out his tobacco-pouch, bit a half-moon from his plug, tucked it away in his cheek, and swept his eyes quizzically around the harbour. “That's all right, Mr. Halloran; that's all right,” he observed, discharging a preliminary brown streak. “I s'pose I've got to go up against old Salt Peter some day or other, but if I'm goin' to have anything to say about it myself I'd a heap rather go up whole. If I was to come an arm or a leg at a time he might think it was old G. Hyde Bigelow tryin' to fool him in sections, and the first thing I knew he'd be sayin', 'Bigelow, you darned old pile o' culls, there's a line o' little red divils down there a-sittin' up nights for you. Git along!'”