all rot. Rot! Go down an’ strangle the old brute with your necktie, and then you’ll feel better. There is no sense in it, I tell you. Roddy’s burbling.”
Murray plucked at his waistcoat front. It hung absurdly loose.
“You see,” he said, very low, “I never knew; but it’s taking the flesh off my bones, and the nerve out of my heart, all the same. Have you got any answer for that?”
Ormond was trying to interpret things according to his machine-trained understanding.
“Pipi could curse my whole wardrobe till it rotted for all I’d care. Murray, you’re an Englishman. Don’t you know better than to show funk before a Colonial?”
“Lou telled me,” muttered Roddy, shaking on his feet. “He said it meant things that hadn’t got any words to ’em. He said you’d know it in the smells that come out o’ the swamps at night, an’ in the birds never singin’ near you. Don’t say as you does know it! Don’t say Pipi’s killin’ you ’cause of me! Murray! Murray! I ain’t done that! For the sake o’ God, don’t say as I’ve done that!”
“Murray,” said Ormond, and Murray answered to the spur unhesitatingly. For the knowledge of the irrevocable is a man’s trouble only.
“We all have spells of funk occasionally.
