Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/200

 "Show Mr. Reynolds out, Jaimihr!" the general ordered. "Then you may bring the young man in."

Mr. Billy Capper, who had, in truth, telephoned to Government House and secured the privilege of an interview even before the arrival of Woodhouse to report, and had paced the paths of the Alameda since, blowing hot and cold on his resolutions, followed the soft-footed Indian into the presence of General Crandall. The little spy was near a state of nervous breakdown. Following the surprising and unexpected collapse of his plan to do a murder, he had spent a wakeful and brandy-punctuated night, his brain on the rack. His desire to play informer, heightened now a hundredfold by the flaying tongue of Louisa, was almost balanced by his fears of resultant consequences. Cupidity, the old instinct for preying, drove him to impart to the governor-general of Gibraltar information which, he hoped, would be worth its weight in gold; Louisa's promise of a party à deux before a firing squad, which he knew in his heart she would be capable of arranging in a desperate moment, halted him. After screwing up his courage to the point of