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"I have taken it up as well as I can. To be frank with you, Mrs. Borton, I know nothing about his job. I'm going along on blind chance, and trying to keep a whole skin." The old woman looked at me in amazement. "Poor boy!" she exclaimed half-pityingly, half-admiringly. "You put your hands to a job you know nothing about, when Henry Wilton couldn't carry it with all his wits about him."
Porter and Barkhouse ambled out, and Mother Borton gave her chair a hitch that brought us face to face. "You ain't so bad off here," she said, looking around critically. "Can any one git in them winders?" I explained that the west window might be entered from the rear stairway by the aid of the heavy shutter, if it were swung back and the window were open.
"If the gang knew he was here there would be more fun than you saw the other night." "Don't worry about me, Mr. Wilton," said Corson with a grin. "I've stood her crowd off before, and I can do it again if the need comes. But I'd rather smoke a poipe in peace." "You can smoke in peace, but it's not yourself you can thank for it," said Mother Borton sharply. "There'll be no trouble here to-night.
At first I was disappointed, then relieved. Something of the promised explanation was taken off my mind. "I tried to get something out of Mother Borton concerning you," continued Mrs. Knapp. "I even went so far as to see her once." "I don't think you got any more out of her than she wanted to tell." "Indeed I did not. I was afraid Mr. Richmond had not gone about it the right way. You know Mr.
Mother Borton had raised herself upon one elbow; her face, flushed and framed in her gray and tangled hair, was working with anger; and her eyes were almost lurid as she sent fierce glances at one after another of the men about her. She pointed a skinny finger at the door, and each man as she cast her look upon him went out without a word.
"I reckon I ain't got no call to be scared at any crackings in this old house," said Mother Borton with a nervous giggle. "I've hearn 'em long enough. But that man's name gives me the shivers." "What did he ever do to you?" I asked with some curiosity.
Her eyes shone with a strange light of their own, like the eyes of a night-bird, and there was a fierce eagerness in her look. "Eh, dearie, I knew you would come," she cried. The doctor pushed his way to the bedside. "I must insist that the patient be quiet," he said with authority. "Be quiet?" cried Mother Borton. "Is it for the likes of you that I'd be quiet?
I had lost my sense of direction in the strange house, and had been deceived by the resemblance of the ground plan of the two buildings. "But what about the plot?" I asked. "I got your note. It's very interesting. What about it?" "What plot?" "Why, I don't know. The one you wrote me about." Mother Borton bent forward and searched my face with her keen glance.
"Shut the door, honey," she said quietly, lying down once more with a satisfied smile. "That's it. Now me and you can talk cozy-like." "You'd better not talk. Perhaps you will feel more like it to-morrow." "There won't be any to-morrow for me," growled Mother Borton. "I've seen enough of 'em carved to know when I've got the dose myself. Curse that knife!" and she groaned at a twinge of pain.
That mystery of the night, with its memories of the fight in the bar-room, the escape up the stair, the fearsome moments I had spent locked in the vacant place, came on me with nerve-shaking force. It was more likely to be a trap than a meeting meant for my advantage. There was, indeed, no assurance that the note was written by Mother Borton herself.
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