Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/193

 know it, 'fore we get through with this job we're on. You know, now, what it is, don't you?"

"The diamonds?" Urleigh asked.

"You bet! I wasn't asleep last night when you was gallivantin' with the girls. I seen you sweetenin' Delia. Good! You got a game to work, now. See? I want a chanct at that boat of her'n, see? She said she throwed the diamonds overboard, but she's crazy if she thinks I'd fall for that. Why them diamonds'd make a girl crazy. Look't—what you got to do is take her up town in Mendova, see? Then I'll get to look—see, in her boat—I know it, every nook and joint."

"That'd be a very nice game for a reputable newspaperman to play," Urleigh suggested, thoughtfully.

"You bet! It's fifty-fifty, you'n me, on them diamonds, now. I don't forget you took care of me, sick's I was, and the way you done."

Urleigh did not demur. The Mississippi soon suggests to the wayfarer that its ways are not the ways of other empires. He wondered that his conscience did not trouble him at the mere thought of playing such a trick on Delia. Somehow he felt as though she had laughed at him the previous night. He wanted a chance to laugh at her now. For that reason he did not immediately deny the surface feasibility of Gost's scheme.