Page:Keeban (IA keeban00balm).pdf/132

 "What way?"

"By the 'bump off'; she wasn't up to it. That was shoved on her, Steve; and she's sore."

"At whom?"

He tapped his chest. "Our friend. Sit down, Steve."

I sat on the chair; he on the bed.

"He's traveling fast, Steve."

"Who?"

Again he said, "Our friend. So far as I can trace him back, he hadn't been worse than a 'gun' up to that job on Dorothy Crewe; that was a borderland act for him. He started it out like a 'gun' and finished up rough. With Win Scofield, he was all the way a 'gorilla'!"

"Gunman you mean by 'gun'?" I asked.

"Almost the opposite, Steve. A 'gun's' a guy who gives action to his brain instead of to his cannon; he gets by without the shootings. A gorilla's a guy that goes in for the rough stuff. A girl doesn't worry when she's got a good 'gun' for her gentleman friend; she's personally as safe with him as with any church warden. He hasn't any hankering for doing a croak; and he hasn't any habit of getting out of his troubles that way. But when a guy that