“How would you like to be chief of police?”
“No. I’m a rotten errand boy.”
“I don’t mean with this bunch. After we’ve got rid of them.”
“And got another just like them.”
“Damn you,” he said, “it wouldn’t hurt to take a nicer tone to a man old enough to be your father.”
“Who curses me and hides behind his age.”
Anger brought a vein out blue in his forehead. Then he laughed.
“You’re a nasty talking lad,” he said, “but I can’t say you haven’t done what I paid you to do.”
“A swell lot of help I’ve got from you.”
“Did you need wet-nursing? I gave you the money and a free hand. That’s what you asked for. What more did you want?”
“You old pirate,” I said, “I blackmailed you into it, and you played against me all the way till now, when even you can see that they’re hell-bent on gobbling each other up. Now you talk about what you did for me.”
“Old pirate,” he repeated. “Son, if I hadn’t been a pirate I’d still be working for the Anaconda for wages, and there’d be no Personville Mining Corporation. You’re a damned little woolly lamb yourself, I suppose. I was had, son, where the hair was short. There were things I didn’t like—worse things that I didn’t know about until tonight—but I was caught and had to bide my time. Why since that Whisper Thaler has been here I’ve been a prisoner in my own home, a damned hostage!”
“Tough. Where do you stand now?” I demanded. “Are you behind me?”