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The first day Farbish and Samson had the place to themselves, but the next morning would bring others. Samson's ideas of a millionaires' shooting-box had been vague, but he had looked forward to getting into the wilds. The marshes were certainly desolate enough, and the pine woods through which the buckboard brought them.
It's just as well not to discuss the nectarines with the orchids, or the orchids with the nectarines." Samson made no response. But Farbish, meeting his eyes, felt as though he had been contemptuously rebuked. His own eyes clouded with an impulse of resentment. But it passed, as he remembered that his plans involved the necessity of winning this boy's confidence.
"Nothing at all," replied Farbish, with entire gravity. "Personally, I like Horton immensely. I simply thought you might find things more congenial when he wasn't among those present." Samson was puzzled, but he did not fancy hearing from this man's lips criticisms upon friends of his friends. "Well, I reckon," he said, coolly, "I'd like him, too." "I beg your pardon," said the other.
Horton felt this objectionable innuendo was directly traceable to Adrienne's ill-judged friendship for the mountaineer, and he bitterly blamed the mountaineer. And, while he had been brooding on these matters, a man acting as Farbish's ambassador had dropped into his room, since Farbish himself knew that Horton would not listen to his confidences.
Farbish watched them with a smile that had in it a trace of the sardonic. The career of Farbish had been an interesting one in its own peculiar and unadmirable fashion. With no advantages of upbringing, he had nevertheless so cultivated the niceties of social usage that his one flaw was a too great perfection. He was letter-perfect where one to the manor born might have slurred some detail.
"The life here has a tendency to make us cynical in our speech, even though we may be quite the reverse in our practices. In point of fact, I fancy we were both rather out of our element at Collasso's studio." At the steps of a Fifth Avenue club, Farbish halted. "Won't you turn in here," he suggested, "and assuage your thirst?" Samson declined, and walked on.
"Farbish has lived everywhere," he ran on, "and, if he takes a fancy to you, he will put you up at the best clubs. I think I shall sell him a landscape." The girl was talking rapidly and loudly. She had at once taken the center of the room, and her laughter rang in free and egotistical peals above the other voices. "Come," said the host, "I shall present you."
That evening, when Samson went to his room, Farbish joined him. "I've been greatly annoyed to find," he said, seating himself on Samson's bed, "that Horton arrived to-day." "I reckon that's all right," said Samson. "He's a member, isn't he?" Farbish appeared dubious. "I don't want to appear in the guise of a prophet of trouble," he said, "but you are my guest here, and I must warn you.
That they were together late in the evening, unchaperoned, at a road-house whose reputation was socially dubious, was a thing he did not realize. But Farbish was keenly alive to the possibilities of the situation. He chose to construe the Kentuckian's blank expression as annoyance at being discovered, a sentiment he could readily understand.
He turned suddenly to Farbish. "Why did you insist on my putting that in my pocket" Samson took out the pistol, and threw it down on the table-cloth in front of Wilfred, where it struck and shivered a half-filled wine-glass "and why did you warn me that this man meant to kill me, unless I killed him first? I was meant to be your catspaw to put Wilfred Horton out of your way.
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