Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/86

84 know what I am going to do. And you will leave me to do it. You are not my master in this."

His voice was still quiet and rather slow. But the amused indifference had gone out of it. Tempest recognised the truth. Dick's mind was on the trail and he would not be whipped off it.

"You have changed more than I ever thought you would," he said.

"Possibly." Dick stood up, stretching his long limbs. "It was one of that sex which you are being so extremely fastidious about who was responsible in the first place, as you may remember. Oh, I don't owe her any grudge. I have had my fun, as I said. And I am going to take this thing through—also as I said."

He lay awake long that night, assorting such facts as he knew. They were not many, but the very difficulty of the whole complicated matter delighted him. Jennifer knew nothing of it. That was sure. And Slicker knew nothing. Their innocence would help him infinitely. Already he understood Ducane. The man was false and dishonourable right through, but he was also a coward. Robison he knew very little of. The man kept clear of the barracks and the policeman, and any overtures had been met with dislike and suspicion. Now Dick decided to try another way. Rage would show the breed's elemental nature more completely than anything else. It would be easy to touch him there, and Dick was never afraid of consequences. He went to sleep on that with the twitching smile on his lips which Grey Wolf had already come to regard with suspicion.

A week later he put his decision into force on a night of wild storm and eddying snow. The timber-lined mess-room at the barracks was warm that night, and bright with the coal-oil lamps and the red glow from the stove where Kennedy swung the door open. Men going by saw the gleam over the picket- fence, and drifted in, one by one; leaving puddles of melting snow as calling-cards for Poley over the kitchen-floor, and disturbing Dick and Kennedy where they strove to make up a half-year's arrears with needle and thread on more or less wrecked garments.

The varied degrees of men among which Dick's life was