"I ain't here to fix up no scoop for the Record", broke in Grady.
"That paper never did treat me right."
"It has treated you as well as you deserved," retorted Godfrey. "I'm going to talk plainly to you, Grady. Your goose is cooked. You can't hold on for an hour after last night's get-away becomes public."
"We'll see about that!" growled Grady, but the fight had evidently been taken out of him.
"I understand you wouldn't let Simmonds telephone for me last night?" queried Godfrey.
"That's right—it wasn't none of your business."
"Perhaps not. And yet, if I had been there, the cleverest thief in Paris, if not in the world, would be safe behind those chrome-nickle steel bars at the Twenty-third Street station, instead of at liberty to go ahead and rob somebody else."
"You're mighty cocksure," retorted Grady. "It's easy to be wise after it's all over."
"Well, I'm not going to argue with you," said Godfrey. "I admit it was a good disguise, and a clever idea—but, just the same, you ought to have seen through it. That's your business."
Grady mopped his face.
"Oh, of course!" he sneered. "I ought to have seen through it! I ought to have suspected, even when I found you tryin' to interview him; even when I got him off the boat myself; even when I went through his papers and found them all right—yes, even to the photograph on his passport! That's plain enough now, ain't it! If people only had as good foresight as they have hindsight, how easy it would be!"