Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/256

244 to the World." His voice was a breathy falsetto. He crammed his linen into the case.

"I understand," Colburn said, putting up his hat from his forehead, "that you had a mine in Idaho."

"Me? I had n't." He clapped down the top of the case and snapped the catches on it. "Nor anywhere else."

"On the Snake River," Colburn added.

Sims was bending down to his work. He did not straighten up, but after a perceptible pause he turned to the reporter the tail of a startled eye. Colburn's face shone in the light with a plump and interested geniality.

"You 've got the wrong man," Sims said hoarsely.

Colburn replied, without irony, in a tone merely of seeking further assurance of his mistake: "Oh! Is that so? Did n't you stake out a claim there, with a partner, on an island in '98?"

Sims reached his hat and his overcoat, and caught up his suit-case. "I 've got to catch a train. I 've got no time to talk to you. I 've got no time, I tell you. Let me out of here."

"I 'm sorry," Colburn said as he opened the door. "I wanted to give you a chance to put us right on that story. That thing 's pretty heavy, ain't it? Let me have it." And with all the calmness of his strength he took the suit-case forcibly from the trembling Sims. "What train do you want to catch?"

Sims struggled into his overcoat, hurrying along the hall, pulling his battered soft felt hat down on his ears.