“I may as well go and tell him that the brothers Grau have gone over to the enemy,” he said to me. “Come along, Bob, and see him squirm. He always does when he is stabbed in such a vital point as the purse. That’s a veritable heel of Achilles with him.”
Montell was alone. He stood with his back to the fire, legs spread apart, hands clasped behind him. He looked very well satisfied with himself. His little eyes surveyed us placidly from under the blinking, puffy lids.
“Well, George, you’re back, eh?” he observed. “How’s everything below?”
“Very well, I dare say,” Barreau answered, during the process of making a cigarette, “from the other fellow’s point of view.”
Montell’s eyelids drew a little nearer together.
“How’s that?” he inquired, in his mildest manner.
And Barreau, when he had found a box to his liking and seated himself on it beside the fire, proceeded to tell him very much as he had told me. The two of them eyed each other a few seconds. Then Montell bit the end off the cigar he had tucked in one corner of his thick-lipped mouth and spat it viciously into the fireplace.
“God damn ’em!” he snarled. But whether the Company or the two Frenchmen he did not specify—perhaps both. Barreau laughed softly.
“Don’t let your angry passions rise,” he sneered. “Temper always induces apoplexy in fat people. A man of your beefy tendency should be very careful.”
Montell’s heavy jowl quivered slightly, and his jaws clamped together. Aside from that he kept an impassive front. With that last shot Barreau turned his gaze to the fire, and as Montell stood staring intently before him there was an interval of silence. In the hush a scuffling sound arose in the rear of the store.