Читать книгу The Green Archer онлайн

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They talked babies for an hour. Mr. Wood seemed inclined to talk of nothing else.

"Mr. Wood, I have an idea that you know a great deal more about Abe Bellamy than you say. You don't like him, do you?"

Mr. Wood was playing with a golden figure of Pan, an exquisite little statuette that stood on his writing-table.

"I know enough to hang him," he said without lifting his eyes.

Spike heard, amazed.

"You know enough to hang him?" he repeated. "That's a pretty serious thing to say."

Wood raised his eyes.

"It might be if I were not speaking in absolute confidence to a man I trust," he said.

Usually Spike hated to be told anything in confidence, but for once he was eager for unpublishable news.

"I have no proof—absolutely none," the child-lover went on. "Nevertheless, I know sufficient to hang him. I don't say that he would hang on my unsupported statement. The law is very tender of human life."

"It was a child, of course," said Spike. "Without suggesting that you have no use for grown-ups, or that you would not get heated up over the shooting of a fat man, I fancy from your tone that it was a child."