--how much are they?" interrupted the stranger.

"Six--three dollars a bottle," says Sol, boosting the price.

The little man peeled a twenty off a roll of bills and threw it down.

"Keep the other five bottles for me!" he cried in a shaky voice, and ran
out, with me after him, forgetting his change and to shut the door
behind us.

Back through McGrue's bar we trailed like one of these moving-picture
chases and into the back room.

"Well, here we are home again," said I.

The stranger grabbed a glass and filled it half full of soothing syrup.

"Here, you aren't going to drink that!" I yelled at him. "Didn't you
hear Sol tell you the dose is a spoonful?"

But he didn't pay me any attention. His hand was shaking so he could
hardly connect with his own mouth, and he was panting as though he'd run
a race.

"Well, no accounting for tastes," I said. "Where do you want me to ship
your remains?"

He drank her down, shut his eyes a few minutes, and held still. He had
quit his shaking, and he looked me square in the face.

"What's it _to_ you?" he demanded. "Huh? Ain't you never seen a guy hit
the hop before?"

He stared at me so truculently that I was moved to righteous wrath; and
I answered him back. I told him what I thought of him and his clothes
and his conduct at quite some length. When I had finished he seemed to
have gained a new attitude of aggravating wise superiority.

"That's all right, kid; that's all right," he assured me; "keep your
hair on. I ain't such a bad scout; but you gotta get used to me. Give me
my hop and I'm all right. Now about this Hooper; you say you know him?"

"None better," I rejoined. "But what's that to you? That's a fair
question."

He bored me with his beady rat eyes for several seconds.

"Friend of yours?" he asked, briefly.

Something in the intonations of his voice induced me to frankness.

"I have good cause to think he's trying to kill me," I replied.

He produced a pocketbook, fumbled in it for a moment, and laid before me
a clipping. It was from the Want column of a newspaper, and read as
follows:

A.A.B.--Will deal with you on your terms. H.H.

"A.A.B. that's me--Artie Brower. And H.H.--that's him--Henry Hooper," he
explained. "And that lil' piece of paper means that's he's caved, come
off, war's over. Means I'm rich, that I can have my own ponies if I want
to, 'stead of touting somebody else's old dogs. It means that I got old
H.H.--Henry Hooper--where th