The whole table watched with a sudden
keenness, and they saw Bard turn, ever so slightly, just as Calamity
passed behind the chair.
"I say," he said, "may I have a bit of hot water to put in this coffee?"
"Sure," said Calamity, and went on, but the whole table knew that the
stranger was on his guard.
The mutual suspicion gave a tenseness to the atmosphere, as if it were
charged with the electricity of a coming storm, a tingling waiting which
made the men prone to become silent and then talk again in fitful
outbursts. Or it might be said that it was like a glass full of
precipitate which only waits for the injection of a single unusual
substance before it settles to the bottom and leaves the remaining
liquid clear. It was for the unusual, then, that the entire assembly
waited, feeling momentarily that it must be coming, for the strain could
not endure.
As for Bard, he stuck by his original apparent indifference. For he
still felt sure that the real William Drew was behind this elaborate
deception and the thing for which he waited was some revelation of the
hand of the master.
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