Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/185

 "And then what?" still challenged the other.

"As a man who knows your record, in the next place. And on the next count, as the man who 's wise to those phony bills of lading of yours, and those doped-up clearance papers, and those cases of carbines you 've got down your hold labeled bridge equipment, and that nitro and giant-caps, and that hundred thousand rounds of smokeless you 're running down there as phonograph records!"

Tankred continued to smoke.

"You ever stop to wonder," he finally inquired, "if it ain't kind o' flirtin' with danger knowin' so much about me and my freightin' business?"

"No, you 're doing the coquetting in this case, I guess!"

"Then I ain't standin' for no rivals—not on this coast!"

The two men, so dissimilar in aspect and yet so alike in their accidental attitudes of an uncouth belligerency, sat staring at each other.