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"Sure!" said Hoppy Meggs. "Well, we'll beat it, then," snapped Hunchback Joe. The room was in darkness again. Jimmie Dale crouched further back along the wall. The rear door opened, two shadows emerged, passed around the corner of the tenement and disappeared.
'Miss Pillenger, I implore you 'Silence! I am only a working-girl A wave of mad fury swept over Mr Meggs. The shock of the blow and still more of the frightful ingratitude of this horrible woman nearly made him foam at the mouth. 'Don't keep on saying you're only a working-girl, he bellowed. 'You'll drive me mad. Go. Go away from me. Get out. Go anywhere, but leave me alone!
No; poison was the thing. Easy to take, quick to work, and on the whole rather agreeable than otherwise. Mr Meggs hid the glass behind the inkpot and rang the bell. 'Has Miss Pillenger arrived? he inquired of the servant. 'She has just come, sir. 'Tell her that I am waiting for her here. Jane Pillenger was an institution.
It seemed an hour, a great period of time since the first shout had rung through the hall it had been but a matter of seconds. Jimmie Dale was crouched a little forward in his chair now, tense, motionless. What was holding Hoppy Meggs! This was Hoppy Meggs' cue, wasn't it? those shots there, aimed at the floor, had only been to create the panic there was to be another shot that
Mr Meggs surveyed them calmly. He would not have admitted it, but he had had a lot of fun writing those letters. The deliberation as to who should be his heirs had occupied him pleasantly for several days, and, indeed, had taken his mind off his internal pains at times so thoroughly that he had frequently surprised himself in an almost cheerful mood.
That the timid animals had been feeding in the vicinity of a human habitation a full hour after dawn was not probable. Nor did a careful search of the plain through the glasses disclose any sign of a hut or tent or the smoke of a camp-fire. An order from Meggs preparatory for letting go anchor roused Lord James from his momentary pause.
The man was well enough known in the underworld, a hanger-on for the most part, a confirmed hop-fighter, though when not under the influence of the drug he was counted one of the cleverest second-story workers and lock-pickers in the Bad Lands Hoppy Meggs, they called him. Again Jimmie Dale's eyes shifted to Hunchback Joe once more. Like some abnormal and repulsive toad the man looked.
The result was that Nature, as is her wont, laid for him, and got him. It seemed to Mr Meggs that he woke one morning to find himself a chronic dyspeptic. That was one of the hardships of his position, to his mind. The thing seemed to hit him suddenly out of a blue sky.
The necessity for working for a living and a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the more expensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare had up to that time kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he had twinges; more often he had none. Then came the legacy, and with it Mr Meggs let himself go.
When, after a full half-hour's run, the steamer skirted along the edge of the reefs, close in under the seaward face of the headland, the searcher at last lowered his binoculars, bitterly disappointed. "Not a trace not a trace!" he complained. "If they've been here, they've either gone inland or we're too late! Six weeks starvation fever!" Meggs shook his head reassuringly.
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