“Oh, a lad about town who lodges above and does odd jobs for me,—brushes my coat, cleans my shoes, and after his day’s work goes an errand now and then. Make yourself scarce, Beck! Anatomy, vanish!”
Beck grinned, nodded, pulled hard at a flake of his hair, and closed the door.
“One of your brotherhood, that?” asked Jason, carelessly.
“He, oaf? No,” said Grabman, with profound contempt in his sickly visage. “He works for his bread,—instinct! Turnspits and truffle-dogs and some silly men have it! What an age since we met! Shall I mix you a tumbler?”
“You know I never drink your vile spirits; though in Champagne and Bordeaux I am any man’s match.”
“And how the devil do you keep old black thoughts out of your mind by those washy potations?”
“Old black thoughts—of what?”
“Of black actions, Jason. We have not met since you paid me for recommending the nurse who attended your uncle in his last illness.”
“Well, poor coward?”
Grabman knit his thin eyebrows and gnawed his blubber lips.