“I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card among his things.”
The Quarres were listening to the conversation in the next room with as much interest as I, but Thomas Quarre’s eyes never left me, and his fat fingers never relaxed about the gun in his lap. His wife sipped tea, with her head cocked on one side in the listening attitude of a bird.
Except for the weapon in the old man’s lap, there was not a thing to persuade the eye that melodrama was in the room; the Quarres were in every other detail still the pleasant old couple who had given me tea and expressed sympathy for the elderly lady who had been injured.
The feminine voice from the next room:
“Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”
Hook:
“That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off, first thing!”
The feminine voice:
“And put our necks in the noose?”
Hook, scornfully:
“As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L.A. job, do you?”
The British voice:
“You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And