“You can’t speak too low. Yes. That’s what he and I agreed.”
“I tell you what, Tony—”
“You can’t speak too low,” says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
“I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it’s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.”
“And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not,” suggests Tony.
“Then we’ll face it out. They don’t belong to him, and they never did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands—a legal friend of yours—for security. If he forces us to it, they’ll be producible, won’t they?”
“Ye-es,” is Mr. Weevle’s reluctant admission.
“Why, Tony,” remonstrates his friend, “how you look! You don’t doubt William Guppy? You don’t suspect any harm?”
“I don’t suspect anything more than I know, William,” returns the other gravely.
“And what do you know?” urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend’s once more warning him, “I tell you, you can’t speak too low,” he repeats his question without any sound at all, forming with his lips only the words, “What do you know?”