could the other man be?
Engrossed with his own thoughts, he appeared to forget where he was and who was present; for he commenced walking up and down the room; then stopped; folded his arms, and talked to himself in low, broken sentences. Again he walked to the far end of the room and stopped there.
Jones, in the mean time, to avoid farther questioning, seated himself; and leaning his elbows on his knees, hid his face in his hand. He was disturbed, however, by feeling himself shaken roughly by the shoulder. ‘What you’ve just been telling me, is a lie!’ said Grosket, sternly. ‘You should know me well enough not to run the risk of trifling with me. I want the truth and nothing else. Where were you last night?’
Jones looked up at him and then answered in a sullen tone: ‘I’ve told you once; I was here.’
Grosket went to a dark corner of the room and brought back Jones’ great-coat, completely saturated with water. ‘This room scarcely leaks enough to do that,’ said he, throwing it on the floor in front of Jones. ‘Ha! what’s that in the pocket?’
He thrust in his hand and drew out a pistol. The hammer was down, the cap exploded, and the inside of the muzzle blackened by burnt powder.
‘Fired off!’ said he. ‘You told the truth. The man who went with Craig did look like you. I know the rest. Tim Craig is dead, and you shot him.’
An expression of strange meaning crossed the face of the burglar as he returned the steady look of his visiter without making any reply. But Grosket was not yet done with him; for he said in a slow, savage tone: ‘Now mark me well. If you lie in what you tell me, I’ll hang you. Who employed you to do this job?’
Jones eyed him for a moment, and then turned away impatiently and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t worry me. I’m sick and half crazy. Get away, will ye!’
‘This to me! to me!’ exclaimed the other, stepping back, his eyes flashing fire; ‘you forget yourself.’
Jones rose up, his red hair hanging like ropes about his face, and his bloodshot eyes and disfigured features giving him the look rather of a wild beast than of a man. Shaking his finger at Grosket, he said, ‘Keep away from me to day, I say. There’s an evil spell over me. Come to-morrow, but don’t push me to-day, or God knows what you may drive me to do. There, there—go.’
Still Grosket stirred not, but with a curling lip and an eye as bright as his own, and voice so fearfully quiet and yet stern that at another time it might have quelled even the strong spirit of the robber, he said ‘Enoch Grosket never goes until his object is attained.’
‘Then you won’t go?’ demanded Jones.
‘No!’
Jones made a hasty step toward him, with his teeth set and his eyes burning like coals of fire; but whatever may have been his purpose, and from the expression of his face, there was little doubt but that it was a hostile one, he was diverted from it by hearing a hand on the latch of the door and a voice from without demanding admittance.
‘It is Rust,’ exclaimed Grosket, in a sharp whisper. He touched the burglar on the shoulder and said in the same tone, ‘I’m going in there.’ He pointed to a closet in a dark part of the room, nearly concealed by the wainscotting. Let him in, and betray me if you dare!’
‘You seem to know our holes well,’ muttered Jones. ‘You’ve been here afore.’ Grosket made no reply, but hurried across the room and secreted himself in the closet, which evidently had been constructed as a place of concealment, either for the tenants of the room themselves, or for whatever else it might not suit their fancy to have too closely examined.
Jones stared after him, apparently forgetting the applicant for admission, until a renewed and very violent knocking recalled his attention to it. He then went to the door, drew back the bolt, and walked to his seat, without even glancing to see who came in, or whom the person was who followed so closely at his heels. Nor did he look around until he felt his arm roughly grasped, and a sharp stern voice hissing in his ear:
‘So, so! a fine night’s work you’ve made of it. Tim Craig is dead and the whole city is already ringing with the news; and you, you’re a murderer!’
Jones started from his seat with the sudden spasmodic bound of one who has received a mortal thrust. He stared wildly at the sharp thin face which had almost touched his, and then sat down and said:
‘Don’t talk to me so, Mr. Rust; I can’t bear it.’
‘Ho, ho! your conscience is tender, is it? It has a raw spot that won’t bear handling, has it? We’ll see to that. But to business,’ said he, his face becoming white with rage; his black eyes blazing, and his voice losing its smoothness and quivering as he spoke.
‘I’ve come here to fulfil my agreement; you were to get that child for me to-day; I’ve come for her; where is she?’
Jones looked at him with an expression of impatience mingled with contempt, but made him no answer.
‘Tim Craig was to have gone to that house; he was to have carried her off; he was to have her here, here, HERE!’ said he, in the same fierce tone. ‘Why hasn’t he done it?’
‘Because he’s dead,’ said Jones savagely.
‘I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!’ exclaimed Rust. ‘He deserved it. The coward! Let him die.’
‘Tim Craig was no coward,’ replied Jones, in a tone which, had Rust been less excited, would have warned him to desist.
‘Ha!’ exclaimed Rust, scanning him from head to foot, as if surprised at his daring to contradict him, ‘Would you gainsay me?’
Jones returned his look without flinching, his teeth firmly set and grating together. At last he said:
‘I do gainsay you; and I do say, whoever calls Tim Craig a coward lies!’
‘This, and from you!’ exclaimed Rust, shaking his thin finger in his very face; ‘this from you; you, a house-breaker, a thief, and last night the murderer of your comrade. Ho! ho! it makes me laugh! Fool! How many lives have you? One word of mine could hang you.’
‘You’ll never hang me,’ replied Jones, in the same low, savage tone. ‘I wish you had, before that cursed job of yours made me put a bullet in poor Tim. I wish you had; but it is too late. You wont now.’
Words cannot describe the fury of Michael Rust at seeing himself thus bearded by one whom he had been used to see truckle to him, whom he considered the mere tool of Craig, and whom he had never thought it worth while even to consult in their previous interviews.
‘Wont I? wont I? Look to yourself,’ muttered he, shaking his finger at him with a slow, cautioning gesture, ‘Look to yourself.’
‘You’re right, I will; I say I will,’ exclaimed Jones, leaping up and confronting him. ‘I say I will; and now I do!’ He grasped him by the throat and shook him as if he had been a child.
‘I might as well kill him at once,’ muttered he, without heeding the struggles of Rust. ‘It’s him or me; yes, yes, I’ll do it.’
Coming to this fatal conclusion, he flung Rust back on the floor and leaped upon him. At this moment, however, the door of the closet was thrown open, and Grosket, whom he had entirely forgotten, sprang suddenly out:
‘Come, come, this wont do!’ said he; ‘no murder!’
Jones made no effort to resist the jerk at his arm with which Grosket accompanied his words, but quietly rose, and said:
‘Well, he drove me to it. He may thank you for his life, not me.’
Relieved from his antagonist, Rust recovered his feet, and turning to Grosket said, in a sneering tone:
‘Michael Rust thanks Enoch for having used his influence with his friend, to prevent the commission of a crime which might have made both Enoch and his crony familiar with