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"We know all we want to about Brunell's life at present his home in the Bronx, and his little map-making shop and we're not trying to rake up anything from the past to hold over him now; it is only some general information I want. As to your nephew, you've got to tell me all you know about him, or it's all up with you.
As quite a young man he had worked at the building of the branch line from Oxford to Wolverhampton, via Worcester, the "O.W. and W.," or "Old Wusser and Wusser," as it was called, until taken over by the Great Western Railway. The latter, extending from London to Oxford, was, I believe, one of Brunell's masterly conceptions, being without a tunnel the whole way.
Brunell shut the door an' the man ran off the way he had come. I come down an' got my hot vinegar an' when I got back to my room I seen there were lights in Mr. Brunell's room an' Emily's, an' one in the livin'-room, too, but my tooth was jumpin' so I went straight to bed.
Jimmy Brunell's run straight for near twenty years, so far as we know." "And Charley?" persisted Morrow. "It's no use, Mame," Walter Pennold repeated, dully. "If I go up again, it means the end for me. Charley's got to take his chance, same as the rest of us. God knows I tried to do the right thing by the boy, same as Jimmy did by his daughter, but Charley's got the blood in him.
By scaling a back-yard wall or two he found an alley leading to the street; and making a detour of several blocks, he returned to his lodgings, to find Mrs. Quinlan waiting in great excitement to relate her version of the revolver shot. Morrow listened with what patience he could muster, and then handed Caliban over to her mercy. "It's Miss Brunell's cat," he explained.
Quinlan's, and his patience was rewarded when after a few moments the Brunell's door re-opened and he heard the girl's voice calling anxiously: "Kitty! Kitty!" Morrow rose with unfeigned alacrity and crossing the road, opened the little gate without ceremony and mounted the steps of the porch. "I beg your pardon," he said blandly. "Is this your kitten?
"And if those securities are at the bank, he ought to be willin' to come in with us on a share," the wife supplemented shrewdly. "But it seems like some kind of a gag to me. You knew all Jimmy Brunell's jobs till he got religion or somethin', and turned honest I can't think of any old crook who'd turn over that money to him, two hundred thousand cold, because his conscience hurt him, can you?
"Just a minute, and we'll look at the two notes, the one you found in Brunell's room in the deserted cottage, and the other which came to me in the cigarette box meant for Paddington, from Mac Alarney. Then we'll be able to see how they were worked out. And you'll see that though they look extremely meaningless and confusing, they are in reality extremely simple."
"Nothin' in that for you, Al; not a nickel, if that's what you're here for." "I'm not on Brunell's trail. I've found him," Morrow returned quietly; and in the tense pause which ensued he added dryly: "You led me to him." "So that's what it was, a plant!" Walter started from his chair, but Mame laid a trembling, sinewy hand upon his shoulder and forced him back.
The whole thing might be merely a relic of Jimmy Brunell's past performances, in the life he gave up long ago." Morrow spoke almost eagerly, as if momentarily off his guard, but Blaine shook his head. "Rather too dangerous a relic to keep in one's possession, Guy, simply as a souvenir a reminder of things the man is trying to forget, to live down.
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