“Bosh! Look at me,” rejoined Sibley. “Drink women--nit! Not for me! I’ve got no vice. I don’t even smoke.”
“No vice? Begobs, yours has got you like a tire on a wheel! Vice--what do you call gamblin’? It’s the biggest vice ever tuk grip of a man. It’s like a fever, and it’s got you, John, like the nail on your finger.”
“Well, p’r’aps, he’s got that vice too. P’r’aps J. G. Kerry’s got that vice same as me.”
“Anyhow, we’ll get to know all we want when he goes into the witness box at the Logan murder trial next week. That’s what I’m waitin’ for,” Deely returned, with a grin of anticipation. “That drug-eating Gus Burlingame’s got a grudge against him somehow, and when a lawyer’s got a grudge against you it’s just as well to look where y’ are goin’. Burlingame don’t care what he does to get his way in court. What set him against Kerry I ain’t sure, but, bedad, I think it’s looks. Burlingame goes in for lookin’ like a picture in a frame--gold seals hangin’ beyant his vestpocket, broad silk cord to his eye-glass, loose flowin’ tie, and long hair-makes him look pretentuous and showy. But your ‘Mr. Kerry, sir,’ he don’t have any tricks to make him look like a doge from Veenis and all the eyes of the females battin’ where’er he goes. Jealousy, John Sibley, me boy, is a cruil thing.”
“Why is it you ain’t jealous of him? There’s plenty of women that watch you go down-town--you got a name for it, anyway,” remarked Sibley maliciously.
Deely nodded sagely. “Watch me now, that’s right, me boy. I got a name for it, but I want the game without the name, and that’s why I ain’t puttin’ on any airs--none at all. I depend on me tongue, not on me looks, which goes against me. I like Mr. J. G. Kerry. I’ve plenty dealin’s with him, naturally, both of us being in the horse business, and I say he’s right as a minted dollar as he goes now. Also, and behold, I’d take my oath he never done anything to blush for. His touble’s been a woman--wayward woman what stoops to folly! I give up tryin’ to pump him just as soon as I made up my mind it was a woman. That shuts a man’s mouth like a poor-box.
“Next week’s fixed for the Logan killin’ case, is it?”
“Monday comin’, for sure. I wouldn’t like to be in Mr. Kerry’s shoes. Watch me now, if he gives the evidence they say he can give--the prasecution say it--that M’Mahon Gang behind Logan ‘ll get him sure as guns, one way or another.”