Page:Edgar Wallace--The book of all-power.djvu/86

 you to come because we have another proposition to make to you."

"If it's a croaking proposition, you needn't go any farther," said Cherry, "and I won't trouble you with my presence, gents, and" he looked in vain for the woman he had seen before, and added, that he might round off his sentence gracefully—"fellow murderers."

"Mr. Bim," said Nicholas in his curious singsong tone, "does it not make your blood boil to see tyranny in high places"

"Now, can that stuff!" said Cherry Bim. "Nothing makes my blood boil, or would make my blood boil, except sitting on a stove, I guess. Tyranny don't mean any more in my young life than Hennessy, and tyrants more than hydrants. I guess I was brought up in a land of freedom and glory, where the only tyrant you ever meet is a traffic cop. If this is another croaking job, why,gents, I won't trouble you any longer."

He half-rose, but Nicholas pushed him down.

"Not even if it was the Czar?" he said calmly. Cherry Bim gaped at him.

"The Czar?" he said, with a queer little grimace to emphasize his disbelief in the evidence of his hearing. "What are you getting at?"

"Would you shoot the Czar for two thousand pounds?" asked Nicholas.