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274 away from you the Baron Rosenthal's gems; he ditched you on the road to Calais and would have made you pay your dominoes then and there if your sponsor the devil had not taken care of you; he cut you up the other day and spoiled a job worth a good sixty thousand francs—and, for all you know, he might land on your fat neck this moment. And yet you have the toupet to tell me that you are the only man in Europe who can do this job which I have more than three-quarters done already!"

Chu-Chu seemed actually a little cowed. As for me, I could feel myself beginning to puff up until I was afraid the bushy ivy might fail to hide me. You can say what you like, a sincere worker is bound to take a certain pride in the thing he's been trained to—honest or dishonest. I'd chucked "graft" and asked nothing better than to live and work on the level; but somehow those words of Ivan's cheered me up inside and gave me a sort of homesick feeling. It was plain enough that he had a deal on, and Chu-Chu was standing out for the first squeeze of the press.

From the tone of Ivan's voice I could almost have hoped that he was trying to pick a quarrel, and that, with a little luck, my work might be done for me, as I doubted that Ivan would have dared to take that tone unless he had his mines of defence all laid. No doubt his hand cuddled a pistol as he spoke, and perhaps Chu-Chu may have known it. At any rate, he probably thought that one feud on his hands at a time was enough; nor do I believe that he wanted to quarrel with the Chief, for he said, in a surly sort of way: