“I’m getting more and more certain with every minute,” asserted the other. “I can see it in his shifty eyes, and his every action. Why, he’s as mad as anything, and has been playing a clever little trick on us. You must know these people who are out of their senses just love to imitate other folks, and make believe they’re Napoleon Bonaparte, General Grant, or some noted character in history. He chances to have a fancy for being the doctor at the asylum; perhaps he’s studied his ways, and can take the other off to the life. But we’re stacked up against a bunch of trouble, believe me, with him in camp.”
“He’d be a dangerous man to tackle, I expect?” ventured Amos, dubiously.
“They always are hard to handle, I’ve heard,” Elmer told him. “Why, even a weak looking woman, if out of her mind, and violent, will be all four men can manage; and at that she’ll claw their faces something dreadful.”
“Whew! but we ought to get rid of him, some way or other,” continued Amos. “I wish I knew of a scheme to start: Elmer, how about you?”
Elmer did not reply immediately. He happened to notice that the furtive eyes of the man under suspicion chanced to be resting on them just then; and it was far from his wish to cause the other to suspect they knew his real identity.
Possibly Wee Willie asked some question just naturally, as he was deeply engrossed in certain things the “doctor” had been telling him; at any rate those searching eyes were again removed from the vicinity of the spot where Elmer and Amos sat close together.
“As force is out of the question,” said Elmer, softly, “why the only thing left is strategy.”
“Yes—go on, please, for I just know you’ve got a scheme made up,” breathed Amos.
“Don’t look so hungrily at me while I’m talking, Amos,” he was told. “Try and grin, as if what I say might be funny. That man’s eyes are like those of a rat or a ferret, and can look right through you.”
It may have been but a wretched excuse for a laugh that Amos managed to emit; but at any rate such a sound would make it appear as though he were listening to some humorous observation on the part of his mate. Elmer, appeased by this, continued to “lift the lid,” as Wee Willie would term it, and explain what he had in mind.