Williams?"
Plunkett seemed as unconcerned as if he were dining at his own table
in Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange
tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost
slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the
cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe,
with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of
whom he had undertaken with surprising self-confidence, to drag
away upon the serious charge of wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a
problem set before him that if wrongly solved would have amounted to
his serious discomfiture, yet there he sat puzzling his soul (to all
appearances) over the novel flavour of a broiled iguana cutlet.
The consul felt a decided discomfort. Reeves and Morgan were his
friends and pals; yet the sheriff from Kentucky had a certain right
to his official aid and moral support. So Bridger sat the silentest
around the board and tried to estimate the peculiar situation. His
conclusion was that both Reeves and Morgan, quickwitted, as he knew
them to be, had conceived at the moment of Plunkett's disclosure of
his mission--and in the brief space of a lightning flash--the
idea that the other might be the guilty Williams; and that each of
them had decided in that moment loyally to protect his comrade
against the doom that threatened him.
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