Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/278

258 between the sea and ourselves. You might have fallen in with them.”

“That would have been my look-out.”

“Mine too, perhaps.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might have put them on my scent.”

Tom had seen it coming, yet he lost his temper when it came.

“So you think that of me?” he cried. “You see how I’ve been treated, and yet you think that!”

“I did think it,” was the reply. “I don’t say I do now. No; it never occurred to me to trust you on the grounds you suggest.”

“Then what did it occur to you to do?”

Hookey Simpson shrugged his shoulders, as one who would rather not say.

“To tie me to a tree, perhaps, and leave me there to starve?”

Hookey Simpson bit his thin lips to avoid smiling, but bent his grey head when that was impossible; and Tom, bending his, saw that the cork was off the polished steel hook, and its point as sharp as a needle. The little grey man was feeling it with his thumb, as he still tried to swallow his smiles.

“I see!” said Tom in a low voice. “Yes, now I see!”

“We never do things by halves,” observed Hookey, sucking a bead of blood, not without ostentation, from the end of his thumb. “We do them with all our might.”

“So I see,” repeated Tom. “Well, and so do I! You stick at nothing—I’ll stick at less. I’ll be with you in what you please—from whist to wholesale murder—only give me the chance! Man alive, can’t you