Four minutes later he opened the door again and said:
“Inside, you.”
I followed him upstairs to old Elihu’s bedroom.
My client sat up in bed with his love letter crushed in one round pink fist, its envelope in the other.
His short white hair bristled. His round eyes were as much red as blue. The parallel lines of his mouth and chin almost touched. He was in a lovely humor.
As soon as he saw me he shouted:
“So after all your brave talking you had to come back to the old pirate to have your neck saved, did you?”
I said I didn’t anything of the sort. I said if he was going to talk like a sap he ought to lower his voice so the people in Los Angeles wouldn’t learn what a sap he was.
The old boy let his voice out another notch, bellowing:
“Because you’ve stolen a letter or two that don’t belong to you, you needn’t think you—”
I put fingers in my ears. They didn’t shut out the noise, but they insulted him into cutting the bellowing short.
I took the fingers out and said:
“Send the flunkey away so we can talk. You won’t need him. I’m not going to hurt you.”
He said, “Get out,” to the chauffeur.