He shook his head slowly, in sinister fashion, and stared at their troubled faces in turn.  “See here; luk,” he resumed solemnly, with lowered voice, “honest tu God, in me own mind I du believe he is th’ man that done ut.”  He paused—­“but provin’ ut’s a diff’runt matther.  We must foller this up an’ get some shtronger evidence yet—­behfure we make th’ break.”

Suddenly he uttered a hollow chuckle.  “Kilbride!” he ejaculated.  “Mind his josh that day—­’bout it might be me, or Gully?—­an how Gully laughed, tu, wid th’ hand of um like this?”

Napoleonic fashion he thrust his huge fist between the buttons of his stable-jacket.

“Yes, by gad!” said Yorke reflectively.  “I sure do, now.  And I’ll bet he had his right hand on his gun, too!  Force of habit, I guess, if he’s an ex-deputy-sheriff.  From what little he’s dropped he’s sure knocked around some, I know.  Hard to say where, and what the beggar hasn’t been in his time.  This accounts for him being so blooming close about the Western States.  It’s always struck me as being queer, that, because, say, look at the slick way he rides and ropes!  He’s never picked that up in five years over on this Side—­and that’s all he claims he’s been in Canada.”

“Besides” chimed in Redmond, eagerly, “that yarn of his about that hobo swiping his dough, Sergeant!  ‘Frame-up,’ p’raps, . . . gave it to him and told him to beat it? . . .”

“Aw, rot!” said Yorke, disgustedly.  He sniffed, with his peculiar mannerism, “that’s dime-novel stuff, Red.  D’ye think he’d be fool enough to risk that, with the chances of the fellow being picked up any minute and squealing on him?” He was silent a moment.  “Rum thing, though,” he murmured, “the way that hobo did beat us to it.”

“‘Some lokil man,’ sez Kilbride,” remarked Slavin musingly.  “Just th’ last one ye’d think av suspectin’.  An’ Gully, begod, sittin’ right there! . . . talk ’bout nerve! . . .”

“But, good heavens!” burst out Yorke.  “Whoever would have suspected him?” He laughed a trifle bitterly.  “It’s all very well for us to turn round now and say ‘what fools we’ve been,’ and all that.  If we’d have been the smart, ‘never-make-a-mistake’ Alecks, like we’re depicted in books, why, of course we’d have ‘deducted’ this right-away, I suppose?  Oh, Ichabod!  Ichabod!  An Englishman, too, by gad!  I’ll forswear my nationality.”

“Whatever could he have on Larry, though?” was Redmond’s bewildered query.  “Say, that sure was a hell of a trick of his—­using Windy’s horse—­while the two of them were scrapping—­trying to frame it up on him!”

“Eyah,” soliliquised the sergeant sagely. “‘Twill all come out in th’ wash.  Whin cliver, edjucated knockabouts like Gully du go bad; begob, they make th’ very wurrst kind av criminals.  They kin pass things off wid th’ high hand an’ kape their nerve betther’n th’ roughnecks—­ivry toime.

“Think av that terribul murdherer, Deeming—­an’ thim tu docthors—­Pritchard an’ Palmer, colludge men, all av thim.  An’ not on’y men, but wimmin, tu.  ‘Member Mrs. Maybrick?  All movin’ in th’ hoighth av society!”