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232, unabashed. "I take it you know a bit more about the Old Man than you did a week ago?"

"Perhaps."

"But sit down: take that chair there, which commands both doors, if you don't trust me."

"Do you think I ought to?"

"Hardly. Otherwise I'd ask you to take my word that you're safe for the time being. As it is, I shan't be offended if you keep your gun handy and your sense of self-preservation running under forced draught. But you won't refuse to join me in a whiskey and soda?"

"No," said Lanyard slowly—"not if you drink from the same bottle."

Again the Englishman laughed unaffectedly as he fetched a decanter, glasses, bottled soda, and a box of cigarettes, and placed them within Lanyard's reach.

The adventurer eyed him narrowly, puzzled. He knew nothing of this man, beyond his reputation—something unsavoury enough, in all conscience!—had seen him only once, and then from a distance, before that conference in the rue Chaptal. And now he was becoming sensitive to a personality uncommonly insinuating: Wertheimer was displaying all the poise of an Englishman of the better caste. More than anybody in the underworld that Lanyard had ever known this blackmailer had an air of one acquainted with his own respect. And his nonchalance, the good nature with which he accepted Lanyard's pardonable distrust, his genial assumption of fellowship and a common footing, attracted even as it intrigued.

With the easy courtesy of a practised host, he measured