* * * * *
Logie stood staring at him. Then he made a great effort to pick up the connecting-link of recollection that he felt sure he must have dropped. He had been so much absorbed in the business in hand that he found it impossible for a moment to estimate the significance of any outside matter. Though he was confounded and disturbed by the unlooked-for apparition of the painter, the idea of hostility never entered his mind.
“Flemington?” he exclaimed, stepping towards him.
But the other man’s expression was so strange that he stopped, conscious of vague disaster. What had the intruder come to tell him? As he stood, Flemington murmured something he could not distinguish, then turned quickly in his tracks.
Logie leaped after him, and seized him by the shoulder before he had time to double round the bend.
“Let me go!” cried Archie, his chest heaving; “let me go, man!”
But James’s grip tightened; he was a strong man, and he almost dragged him over. As he held him, he caught sight of the Government pistol in his belt. It was one that the officer who had lent it to Flemington had taken from the ship.
He jerked Archie violently round and made a snatch at the weapon, and the younger man, all but thrown off his balance, thrust his arm convulsively into the air. His sleeve shot back, laying bare a round, red spot outside the brown, sinewy wrist.
Then there flashed retrospectively before James’s eye that same wound, bright in the blaze of the flaming paper; and with it there flashed comprehension.