“No.”
In the slow swirl of Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of Central Park, two seedy, sinister individuals could hold an exceedingly private conversation without drawing attention to themselves. There were others like us on the scene, in that month of June, 1913, cast up from the obscurest depths of New York. We could revolve there for five or ten minutes, in company with other elements of the city’s life, to be eliminated by degrees, sucked into other currents, forming new combinations or reacting to the old ones.
In silence we shuffled along a few paces, though not exactly side by side. Lovey was just sufficiently behind me to be able to talk confidentially into my ear. My own manner was probably that of a man anxious to throw off a dogging inferior. Even among us there are social degrees.
“Yer’ll be sorry,” Lovey warned me, reproachfully.
“Very well, then,” I jerked back at him over my shoulder; “I shall be sorry.”
“If I didn’t know it was a good thing I wouldn’t ’a’ wanted to take ye in on it—not you, I wouldn’t; and dead easy.”
“I don’t care for it.”
“Ye’re only a beginner—”
“I’m not even that.”
“No, ye’re not even that; and this’d larn ye. Just two old ladies—lots of money always in the ’ouse—no resistance—no weepons nor nothink o’ that kind; and me knowin’ every hinch of the ground through workin’ for ’em two years ago—”