Page:Frank Spearman--Whispering Smith.djvu/226

 He was laughing. Dicksie asked herself if this could be the man about whom floated so many accusations of coldness and cruelty and death. He drew a note-book from a waistcoat pocket.

“Oh, it’s in the note-book! There comes the black note-book,” exclaimed McCloud.

“Don’t make fun of my note-book!”

“I shouldn’t dare.” McCloud pointed to it as he spoke to Dicksie. “You should see what is in that note-book: the record, I suppose, of every man in the mountains and of a great many outside.”

“And countless other things,” added Marion.

“Such as what?” asked Dicksie.

“Such as you, for example,” said Marion.

“Am I a thing?”

“A sweet thing, of course,” said Marion ironically. “Yes, you; with color of eyes, hair, length of index finger of the right hand, curvature of thumb, disposition––whether peaceable or otherwise, and prison record, if any.”

“And number of your watch,” added McCloud.

“How dreadful!”

Whispering Smith eyed Dicksie benignly. “They are talking this nonsense to distract us, of course, but I am bound to read you what I have here, if you will graciously submit.”

“Submit? I wait to hear it,” laughed Dicksie.

“My training in prosody is the slightest, as 202