The chauffeur, looking at me without fondness, left us, closing the door.
Old Elihu gave me the rush act, demanding that I surrender the rest of the letters immediately, wanting to know loudly and profanely where I had got them, what I was doing with them, threatening me with this, that, and the other, but mostly just cursing me.
I didn’t surrender the letters. I said:
“I took them from the man you hired to recover them. A tough break for you that he had to kill the girl.”
Enough red went out of the old man’s face to leave it normally pink. He worked his lips over his teeth, screwed up his eyes at me, and said:
“Is that the way you’re going to play it?”
His voice came comparatively quiet from his chest. He had settled down to fight.
I pulled a chair over beside the bed, sat down, put as much amusement as I could in a grin, and said:
“That’s one way.”
He watched me, working his lips, saying nothing. I said:
“You’re the damndest client I ever had. What do you do? You hire me to clean town, change your mind, run out on me, work against me until I begin to look like a winner, then get on the fence, and now when you think I’m licked again, you don’t even want to let me in the house. Lucky for me I happened to run across those letters.”
He said: “Blackmail.”
I laughed and said: