gaze, "I'd like to know what call you have to be spying on me?"

I opened my eyes wide in wonder.

"Spying? I don't understand."

"No?" said he, with something between a growl and a snarl. "Well, maybe
you don't understand that, either!" And he tossed me a bit of paper.

I felt sure that I did not. My ignorance grew into amazement as I read.
The slip bore the words:

"I have bought Crown Diamond. What's the limit?
Wilton."

"I certainly don't understand," I said. "What does it mean?"

"The man who wrote it ought to know," growled Doddridge Knapp, with his
eyes flashing and the yellow-gray mustache standing out like bristles.
The fangs of the Wolf were in sight.

"Well, you'll have to look somewhere else for him," I said firmly. "I
never saw the note, and never bought a share of Crown Diamond."

Doddridge Knapp bent forward, and looked for an instant as though he
would leap upon me. His eye was the eye of a wild beast in anger. If I
had written that note I should have gone through the window without
stopping for explanations. As I had not written it I sat there coolly
and looked him in the face with an easy conscience.