Beside the clerk's desk in the Potts House, relating one of his anecdotes, I spied Colonel Varney, and managed presently to draw him upstairs to his room. “What's the matter?” he asked.
“Do you know a man named Krebs in the House?” I said.
“From Elkington? Why, that's the man the Hutchinses let slip through,—the Hutchinses, who own the mills over there. The agitators put up a job on them.” The Colonel was no longer the genial and social purveyor of anecdotes. He had become tense, alert, suspicious. “What's he up to?”
“He's found out about this bill,” I replied.
“How?”
“I don't know. But someone told him that it originated in our office, and that we were going to use it in our suit against the Ribblevale.”
I related the circumstances of my running across Krebs, speaking of having known him at Harvard. Colonel Varney uttered an oath, and strode across to the window, where he stood looking down into the street from between the lace curtains.
“We'll have to attend to him, right off,” he said.
I was surprised to find myself resenting the imputation, and deeply. “I'm afraid he's one of those who can't be 'attended to,'” I answered.
“You mean that he's in the employ of the Ribblevale people?” the Colonel inquired.