Prentiss thrust a forefinger inside his collar and gave it a tug as though it choked.
"This Mormon Joe--what became of him?"
The gleeful light went out of Toomey's face.
"He was killed in a shack down here."
"How?"
"A trap-gun."
"By whom?"
Toomey recrossed his long legs and sought a new position for his hands with the quick erratic movements of nervousness. He hesitated, then replied: "They suspected her."
"Why?"
"She was the only one to benefit."
"There was no proof?"
"No."
"What do you think?"
Toomey deliberated a moment: "I believe her innocent, myself," he finally replied.
"So she grew up out there in the hills without any friends or social life," Prentiss commented, musingly.
"There was always a camptender and a sheepherder or two about," Toomey answered with slurring significance.
Prentiss brushed the ashes from his cigar.
"And Prouty had no sympathy with her in her loneliness, but considered her a legitimate target--somebody that everybody 'took a fall out of,' you say?"
There was a quality in his voice now which made Toomey glance at the man quickly, but it was so elusive, so faint, that he could not be certain; and reassured by his impassive face he went on: "Why shouldn't they? What would anybody waste sympathy on her kind for?" His thin lips curled contemptuously.
Again Prentiss sat in the stillness in which not a muscle or an eyelid moved. He seemed even not to breathe until he turned with an impressive deliberateness and subjected Toomey to a scrutiny so searching and prolonged that Toomey colored in embarrassment, wondering the while as to what it meant.
"I presume, Mr. Toomey," Prentiss finally inquired with a careful politeness he had not shown before, "that it would mean considerable to you in the way of commissions on the sale of stock if this project went through?"
Toomey's relief that he had not inadvertently given offense was so great that he almost told the truth as to the exact amount. Just in time he restrained himself and replied with elaborate indifference: "I'd get something out of it for my time and work, of course, but, mostly, I'm anxious to see a friend get hold of a good thing."
This fine spirit of disinterested solicitude met with no response.
"I presume it's equally true, Mr. Toomey, that the completion of the project means considerable to the town?"
"Considerable!" with explosive vehemence. "It's got where it's a case of life or death. The coyotes'll be denning in the Security State Bank and the birds building nests in the Opera House in a year or two, if something don't turn up."