for damages if I make a mistake. But I'm going to try to get the
right man."

"I'll tell you what you do," said Morgan, leaning forward with a
jolly twinkle in his eyes. "You take me. I'll go without any
trouble. The cocoanut business hasn't panned out well this year, and
I'd like to make some extra money out of your bondsmen."

"That's not fair," chimed in Reeves. "I got only $16 a thousand for
my last shipment. Take me, Mr. Plunkett."

"I'll take Wade Williams," said the sheriff, patiently, "or I'll come
pretty close to it."

"It's like dining with a ghost," remarked Morgan, with a pretended
shiver. "The ghost of a murderer, too! Will somebody pass the
toothpicks to the shade of the naughty Mr. 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.