Nobody. Vance Louis Joseph

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СКАЧАТЬ now you can't very well cramp mine, threatening to squeal."

      "Oh, can't I?"

      "No. I know you won't go through with it; not, that is, unless you're willing to face Sing Sing yourself. For that matter, I don't see how you're going to make Boston at all to-night, after that break, unless you go on your own; I don't believe I'm scared enough to stand for being shaken down for your transportation."

      He was gaining the whip-hand much too easily. She averted her face to mask a growing trepidation and muttered sullenly: "What makes you think I'm afraid-?"

      "Oh, come!" he chuckled. "I know you hadn't any lawful business in that house, don't I?"

      "How do you know it?"

      "Because if you had, I would now be going peaceful, with the kind policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of blackmail."

      Burning with indignation and shivering a bit with fear of the man, she stopped short, midway down the ramp to the "lower level," and momentarily contemplated throwing herself upon his mercy and crawling out of it all with whatever grace she might; but his ironic and skeptical smile provoked her beyond discretion.

      "Oh, very well!" she said ominously, turning, "if that's the way you feel about it, we may as well have this thing out here and now."

      And she made as if to go back the way she had come; but his hand fell upon her arm with a touch at once light and imperative.

      "Steady!" he counselled quietly. "This is no place for either bickering or barefaced confidences. Besides, you mustn't take things so much to heart. I was only making fun, and you deserved as much for your cheek, you know. Otherwise, there's no harm done. If you hanker to go to Boston, go you shall, and no thanks to me. Even if I do pay the bill, I owe you a heap more than I'll ever be able to repay, chances are. So take it easy; and I say, do brace up and make a bluff, at least, of being on speaking terms. I'm not a bad sort, but I'm going to stick to you like grim death to a sick nigger's bedside until we know each other better. That's flat, and you may as well resign yourself to it. And here we are."

      Unwillingly, almost unaware, she had permitted herself to be drawn through the labyrinth of ramps to the very threshold of the restaurant, where, before she could devise any effectual means of reasserting herself, a bland head waiter took them in tow and, at Blue Serge's direction, allotted them a table well over to one side of the room, out of earshot of their nearest neighbours.

      Temporarily too fagged and flustered to react either to the danger or to the novelty of this experience, or even to think to any good purpose, Sally dropped mechanically into the chair held for her, wondering as much at herself for accepting the situation as at the masterful creature opposite, earnestly but amiably conferring with the head waiter over the bill of fare.

      Surely a strange sort of criminal, she thought, with his humour and ready address, his sudden shifts from slang of the street to phrases chosen with a discriminating taste in English, his cool indifference to her threatening attitude, and his paradoxical pose of warm-it seemed-personal interest in and consideration for a complete and, to say the least, very questionable stranger.

      She even went so far as to admit that she might find him very likable, if only it were not for that affected little moustache and that semi-occasional trick he practised of looking down his nose when he talked.

      On the other hand, one assumed, all criminals must seem strange types to the amateur observer. Come to think of it, she had no standard to measure this man by, and knew no law that prescribed for his kind either dress clothing with an inverness and a mask of polished imperturbability, or else a pea-jacket, a pug-nose, a cauliflower ear, with bow legs and a rolling gait..

      "There, I fancy that will do. But hurry it along, please."

      "Very good, sir-immediately."

      The head waiter ambled off, and Blue Serge faced Sally with an odd, illegible smile.

      "At last!" he hissed in the approved manner of melodrama, "we are alone!"

      She wasn't able to rise to his irresponsible humour. Thus far her audacity seemed to have earned her nothing but his derision. He was not in the least afraid of her-and he was a desperate criminal. Then what was she in his esteem?

      Such thoughts drove home a fresh painful realisation of her ambiguous personal status. It began to seem that she had been perhaps a little hasty in assuming she was to be spared punishment for her sin, however venial that might in charity be reckoned. Chance had, indeed, offered what was apparently a broad and easy avenue of escape; but her own voluntary folly has chosen the wrong turning.

      Her hands were twisted tight together in her lap as she demanded with tense directness:

      "What have you done with them?"

      He lifted the ironic eyebrow. " Them? "

      "The jewels. I saw you steal them-watched you from the dining-room, through the folding doors-"

      "The deuce you did!"

      "I saw you break open the desk-and everything."

      "Well," he admitted fairly, "I'm jiggered!"

      "What have you done with them?"

      "Oh, the jewels?" he said with curious intonation. "Ah-yes, to be sure; the jewels, of course. You're anxious to know what I've done with them?"

      "Oh, no," she countered irritably; "I only ask out of politeness."

      "Thoughtful of you!" he laughed. "Why, they're outside, of course-in my bag."

      "Outside?"

      "Didn't you notice? I checked it with my hat, rather than have a row. I ought to be ashamed of myself, I know, but I'm a moral coward before a coat-room attendant. I remember keeping tabs one summer, and-will you believe me? – a common, ordinary, every-day three-dollar straw lid set me back twenty-two dollars and thirty cents in tips. But I hope I'm not boring you."

      "Oh, how can you?" she protested, lips tremulous with indignation.

      "Don't flatter; I bore even myself at times."

      "I don't mean that, and you know I don't. How can you sit there joking when you-when you've just-"

      "Come off the job?" he caught her up as she faltered. "But why not? I feel anything but sad about it. It was a good job-wasn't it? – a clean haul, a clear getaway. Thanks, of course, to you."

      She responded, not without some difficulty: "Please! I wouldn't have dared if he hadn't tried to get at that sword."

      "Just like him, too!" Blue Serge observed with a flash of indignation: "his kind, I mean-less burglars than bunglers, with no professional pride, no decent instincts, no human consideration. They never stop to think it's tough enough for a householder to come home to a cracked crib without finding a total stranger to boot-a man he's never even seen before, like as not-ah-weltering on the premises-"

      "Oh, do be serious!"

      "Must I? If you wish."

      The man composed his features to a mask of whimsical attention.

      "What-what did you do with him?" the girl stammered after a pause during which consciousness of her disadvantage became only more acute.

      "Our СКАЧАТЬ