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"Here's the gun. One shell empty. Barrel still hot. You low-lived scoundrel!" Dick's eyes never left the bloody face of the murdered man. He was breathing heavily, as if in pain or extreme terror. "Is he dead?" he whispered through his bloodless, motionless lips. Just then he looked up and saw Ernie at the doorway, bloody-faced, cringing, wide-eyed with dread.

He's that way about everything, always a spare umbrella and an extra pair of rubbers in his locker, and he carries a pearl-handle penknife in a chamois case. But in spite of all that I'm sorry to state that around the Corrugated Ernie is rated as a walking joke. We all josh him, even up to Old Hickory Ellins. The only ones he ever seems to mind much though are the lady typists.

"I I have heard of him," he said, a sudden chill creeping into his veins. "Did she did she speak to you?" asked Ernie. The hard look was creeping back into his eyes. "She didn't see me," muttered David. "She spoke to me. She always does," said Ernie, twisting his fingers. "But," he went on, almost in a wail, "it's because she she pities me!" David's heart was touched.

He only wears that costume because that's his idea of how an assistant auditor should be arrayed. One of these super-system birds, Ernie is. He could turn out an annual report every Saturday if the directors asked for it. Never has to hunt for a bunch of stray figures. He has everything cross-indexed neat and accurate.

There was nothing of mirth in the woman's drawn face. "Oh, Ernie, f'r God's sake! What they goin' to do to you!" He was half way up the narrow stairway, she at the foot of it, peering up at him. "They won't do anything. I guess old Hatton ain't so stuck on havin' his swell golf club crowd know his little boy was beat up by one of the workmen." He was clumping about upstairs now.

I'm different, am I? I'm not as good as she is, am I? Well, say, lemme tell you one thing: Ruby Noakes ain't going to hook up with a sneak thief." "Ernie," said Dick, going very white and speaking very slowly, "you sometimes make me wish you'd 'a' died that time." "I wish I had! Then they'd 'a' hung you."

"I don't know," said the other, pursing his lips. "I can't say that I like Braddock's greedy ways. He wants too much in the divvy. There's plenty of shows nowadays that don't ask anything off of us. But Brad's got to have a slice of it. See? I've been thinking a little of Barnum or Van Amberg." Ernie spoke up shrilly. "You bet your life he ain't going to leave the show."

"Christine is sending books and fruit, and three times a week you are to have a dinner fit for a " The sudden fierce glare in the prisoner's eyes caused David to stop in amazement. "Look here," demanded Dick savagely, "ain't poor Ernie to have any o' these things? Is he to set by and see me eat what?" "You are to be treated alike, of course," cried David quickly. Dick's face cleared.

He had rushed across the street just in time to restrain Ernie in his blind rage. The hunchback, sobbing with jealousy, had started out to follow David, his pistol clutched to his misshapen breast. All the way through the dark streets the cripple was moaning: "I'd have shot him only I was afraid of hittin' her. I couldn't stand it, Dick. He's got her."

The battered hat perched rakishly atop her knob of gray-white hair gave her a jaunty, sporting look, as of a ponderous, burlesque Watteau. She abandoned pretense. "Ernie, your pa'll be awful mad. You know the way he carried on the last time." "Let him. He aint worked five days himself this month." Then, at a sudden sound from the front of the house, "He ain't home, is he?"