"That snake poisons the air," he muttered.
He stepped across to where Goodine and Nash held down the squirming captain.
"Let him get up. He has a good many things to explain to us," he said quietly.
Just then poor old Fletcher raised his head, showing a cut and bleeding mouth. Banks lifted him in his arms, and laid him on the couch.
"Don't stand there like a wooden image!" he said to Jim Harley. "Your inactivity has done quite enough harm already. This old man has been gagged, bound, and starved for days. Get him some brandy."
As Nash and Goodine removed their knees and hands from Captain Wigmore, that old sinner began to laugh immoderately. Still laughing, he got nimbly to his feet, bowed to right and left, and sat down in an armchair.
"Mad as a dog," mumbled Fletcher, with his bleeding lips. "He never was rightly cured, anyhow!"
"Mad?" queried the captain. "If you mean insane, my good fellow, you are very much mistaken. That's right, Jim. Give him a drink—but first wipe the blood off his lips. Don't spoil the flavor of good whisky with bad blood."
"If you are not insane," said Banks, "then you are utterly evil—a thing to crush out like a poisonous snake. But to look you in the eyes is to read the proof of your insanity."
Wigmore frowned. "Banks," he said, "you are feeble. You have the mind and outlook upon life of a boy of ten—of a backward boy of ten. But even so, I believe you have more intelligence than our friends here. However that may be, you managed to blunder across the right trail at last. That's why I took you in hand."