The man called Childers had bent a keen look upon his visitor; another might have described it as unpleasant, stern.
“Well, you know just what that means, eh?” he had said. “You’ll be merely a cog, a link—remember that!”
“Yes,” Annister had answered, and there the interview had ended.
And so Black Steve Annister, serving two masters, had come to Dry Bone, and the end, as it might chance, of the long trail leading Westward into the setting sun.
He rose from the table now, going out into the pale Spring sunshine on his way to the office of Hamilton Rook. He found the building presently; it was the court-house; there was a figure of Blind Justice with her scales just over the entrance. Annister reflected sardonically that, here, in Carter County, distant from a civilization at present as remote as the moon, she was probably also deaf—and dumb. And presently, at the head of a dark flight, there was the office, with the legend:
HAMILTON ROOK
ATTORNEY AND
COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW
There was a small sign at the corner of the door; in obedience to its invitation to “Walk In,” Annister, his hand upon the knob in a noiseless pressure, abruptly flung it wide.
A split second before the opening of that door, and while his hand was on the knob, Annister had seen, or thought that he had seen, a swift shadow pass suddenly across the ground-glass panel; there was the grating sound of a chair being moved backward.