“Well,” said Tom Baker, reaching for more whisky, “I ain’t got much to say, but what I says I stands to on this ‘ere subject, and that is—” Almost with one accord all turned at the creaking of the bedroom door, and there was Pierre Luzon, looking as if he had seen a ghost. His short prison-cropped hair seemed to be standing on end like bristles, and his eyes stared wildly at the four men. At last he cried out in a shrill voice that was almost a scream:
“Ze son of Ben Thurston killed! Ah, ha!” he laughed, hysterically. “Shot through ze heart!—vengeance at last begins! Ze White Wolf is not dead! He is one live man!”
The door was hastily closed with a loud bang, and the weird figure vanished like an apparition.
For a few moments the revellers sat in stupefied silence. Finally Buck Ashley said in a low voice: “Damn that whisky anyhow. It has made us talk too loud.”
“Yes,” remarked Tom Baker, “and also too dangnation much, I’m a-thinkin’.”
Both were sober men now.
“Believe I’ll have a snooze,” said Jack rover, seating himself on an old lounge in a corner of the room. But he did not lie down.