“It’s a lie,” said he, “from beginning to end.”
“Very well; very well. I’ll take care to make the truth known by letter to Dr. Wortle and the Bishop and all them pious swells over there. To think that such a chap as you, a minister of the gospel, living with another man’s wife and looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth! I tell you what; I’ve got a little money in my pocket now, and I don’t mind going over to England again and explaining the whole truth to the Bishop myself. I could make him understand how that photograph ain’t worth nothing, and how I explained to you myself as the lady’s righteous husband is all alive, keeping house on his own property down in Louisiana. Do you think we Lefroys hadn’t any place beside Kilbrack among us?”
“Certainly you are a liar,” said Peacocke.
“Very well. Prove it.”
“Did you not tell me that your brother was buried at San Francisco?”
“Oh, as for that, that don’t matter. It don’t count for much whether I told a crammer or not. That picter counts for nothing. It ain’t my word you were going on as evidence. You is able to prove that Ferdy Lefroy was buried at ’Frisco. True enough. I buried him. I can prove that. And I would never have treated you this way, and not have said a word as to how the dead man was only a cousin, if you’d treated me civil over there in England. But you didn’t.”
“I am going to treat you worse now,” said Peacocke, looking him in the face.
“What are you going to do now? It’s I that have the revolver this time.” As he said this he turned the weapon round in his hand.
“I don’t want to shoot you—nor yet to frighten you, as I did in the bedroom at Leavenworth. Not but what I have a pistol too.” And he slowly drew his out of his pocket. At this moment two men sauntered in and took their places in the further corner of the room. “I don’t think there is to be any shooting between us.”
“There may,” said Lefroy.
“The police would have you.”
“So they would—for a time. What does that matter to me? Isn’t a fellow to protect himself when a fellow like you comes to him armed?”
“But they would soon know that you are the swindler who escaped from San Francisco eighteen months ago. Do you think it wouldn’t be found out that it was you who paid for the shares in forged notes?”
“I never did. That’s one of your lies.”
“Very well. Now you know what I know; and you had better tell me over again who it is that lies buried under the stone that’s been photographed there.”
“What are you men doing with them pistols?” said one of the strangers, walking across the room, and standing over the backs of their chairs.
“We are alooking at ’em,” said Lefroy.
“If you’re agoing to do anything of that kind you’d better go and do it elsewhere,” said the stranger.
“Just so,” said Lefroy. “That’s what I was thinking myself.”
“But we are not going to do anything,” said Mr. Peacocke. “I have not the slightest idea of shooting the gentleman; and he has just as little of shooting me.”
“Then what do you sit with ’em out in your hands in that fashion for?” said the stranger. “It’s a decent widow woman as keeps this house, and I won’t see her set upon. Put ’em up.” Whereupon Lefroy did return his pistol to his pocket—upon which Mr. Peacocke did the same. Then the stranger slowly walked back to his seat at the other side of the room.
“So they told you that lie; did they—at ’Frisco?” asked Lefroy.
“That was what I heard over there when I was inquiring about your brother’s death.”
“You’d believe anything if you’d believe that.”
“I’d believe anything if I’d believe in your cousin.” Upon this Lefroy laughed, but made no further allusion to the romance which he had craftily invented on the spur of the moment. After that the two men sat without a word between them for a quarter of an hour, when the Englishman got up to take his leave. “Our business is over now,” he said, “and I will bid you goodbye.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m athinking,” said Lefroy. Mr. Peacocke stood with his hand ready for a final adieu, but he said nothing. “I’ve half a mind to go back with you to England. There ain’t nothing to keep me here.”
“What could you do there?”
“I’d be evidence for you, as to Ferdy’s death, you know.”
“I have evidence. I do not want you.”
“I’ll go, nevertheless.”
“And spend all your money on the journey.”
“You’d help;—wouldn’t you now?”
“Not a dollar,” said Peacocke, turning away and leaving the room. As he did so he heard the wretch laughing loud at the excellence of his own joke.
Before he made his journey back again to England he only once more saw Robert Lefroy. As he was seating himself in the railway car that was to take him to Buffalo the man came up to him with an affected look of solicitude. “Peacocke,” he said, “there was only nine hundred dollars in that roll.”
“There were a thousand. I counted them half-an-hour before I handed them to you.”
“There was only nine hundred when I got ’em.”
“There were all that you will get. What kind of notes were they you had when you paid for the shares at ’Frisco?” This question he asked out loud, before all the passengers. Then Robert Lefroy left the car, and
