“Wait,” she whispered, closing her fingers on the sleeve of his coat. “Tell me, have you got his number? Have you caught him? Tell me!”
Wallace withdrew his sleeve from her grasp and turned and left the store without another word. His face was drawn for a second with an expression of sickening distaste, for he had seen, quick and sure as lightning, exactly what the woman had in her mind. He knew that she salted away the money which her husband corkscrewed out of the rural population; and he had just now seen her as a rat that contemplates the advisability of leaving a sinking ship. But she was a cautious sort of rat and wanted to make dead sure that the ship was going down before she swarmed down the anchor-chain and swam ashore. This nautical figure of thought came pat to Mr. Wallace, for he had sailed four deep-sea voyages out of St. John in his eighteenth and nineteenth years.
“Mrs. Watt says he’s sick abed with a cold,” he informed Young Dan. “It may be so, for what would be the sense of her tellin’ that lie? That’s the house. If you’ll stable the mare across there at Murphy’s, I’ll go to Watt’s—and you follow me as soon as you’ve stood the mare in the stall. Open the front door an’ walk right in and up the stairs.”
The deputy-sheriff found Luke Watt in bed. The store-keeper was very red of face and watery of eye, and there were dark bruises on his brow.
“Your wife said I’d find you here, sick abed,” said Wallace.
“Well, she told ye the truth,” replied Watt. “What d’ye want, Archie?”
“You, Luke Watt. This is an official visit I’m makin’ you.”
“Me? Official? Who’s the joke on? Tell me when to laugh, will you?”
“Yes, you; and when the time to laugh comes I’ll do it. You’re done.”
“And you’re crazy! I’m done, am I? Who d’ye reckon did me?”