"You leave him to me," answered 'Bias grimly, gulping his tea and preparing to sally forth.
"An' you might remember to leave the child outside. If a lady's name is to be handled in the discussion, you understand. . . . Besides which, witnesses are apt to be awk'ard. Two's the safe number when there's a delicate point to be cleared up."
Fancy reappeared and announced herself ready. 'Bias caught up his hat.
. . . Left to himself, Mr Rogers lay back in his chair and chuckled.
He did not care two straws for Mr Philp, or for what might happen to
him. His mind was off on quite another train of thought.
"I wonder what the woman's game is? 'A hundred pound lyin' idle'—and Hocken around with the same tale this forenoon. . . . Ten per cent, and at a moderate risk. . . . She's shrewd, too, by all accounts. . . . Damme, if this isn't a queer cross-runnin' world! A woman like that, if I'd had the luck to meet her a three-four year ago—before this happened!" . . . He eyed his palsied hand as it reached out, shaking, for the tea-cup.
"When we get to the door," said 'Bias heavily, as he and Fancy turned out of the street into the narrow entry of Union Place, "you're to step back and run away home."
"No fear," she assured him. "I'm doin' you a favour, an' don't you forget it."
"But you can't come inside with me."
"That's all right. Nobody said as I wanted to, in my hearin'. I can see all I want to see. There's a flight o' steps runnin' up close outside the window."
She pointed it out and quite candidly indicated the point at which she proposed to perch herself. "And there's another window at the back," she added: "so's you can see all that's happenin' inside."
"Better fit you ran away home," he repeated.