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308 Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
"Look here, you miserable ash-cat! you will have to give a little more attention to your manners, or I will throw you out of the window!"
The manikin smiled a smile of malicious content and security, puffed a whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me, and said, with a still more elaborate drawl:
"Come — go gently now; don't put on too many airs with your betters."
This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me, too, for a moment. The pigmy contemplated me awhile with his weasel eyes, and then said, in a peculiarly sneering way:
"You turned a tramp away from your door this morning."
I said crustily:
" Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. How do yon know?"
" Well, I know. It isn't any matter how I know."
" Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door—what of it?"
" Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied to him."
"I didn't! That is, I—"
"Yes, but you did; you lied to him."
I felt a guilty pang—in truth, I had felt it forty times before that tramp had traveled a block from my door — but still I resolved to make a show of feeling slandered ; so I said :
"This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp —"
There—wait. You were about to lie again. I know what you said to him. You said the cook was gone down town and there was nothing left from breakfast. Two lies. You knew the cook was behind the door, and plenty of provisions behind her."
This astonishing accuracy silenced me; and it filled |
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