“Will I?” said Plunkett coolly. “Well, go into my little room, at the back of the office. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“When I left here to-night,” said Clymer to Plunkett, when the proprietor of the establishment joined him in his private room, “I was half-shot; but I was resolved to get square somehow with old Fox for discharging me from his shop.”
Plunkett nodded as if he had suspected some such intention ran in his customer’s brain.
“I may as well tell you I meant to set the old ranch on fire if I could get the chance, and I thought I could, as I had a key to the surgery in my pocket.”
His companion said nothing, but regarded him with attention.
“When I reached there about half-past eleven I expected to find the coast clear, for I knew a dead man had been fetched to the surgery in the morning for a post-mortem, and such being the case the room is usually not visited.”
Plunkett, perhaps scenting a longish story, got out his pipe, filled it and began to smoke.
“I was surprised to find the surgery lit up, and, wondering what was going on inside, I crept up to the window overlooking the street and peered in. Fortunately, it was open several inches, and I heard something which set me on a new track.”
“Umph!” muttered Plunkett.
Then Clymer proceeded to detail how the corpse had been brought back to life, much to his listener’s amazement.