He puffed slowly at his cigar. “I guess I was a pretty ornery kid” — he smiled boyishly — “when I came home from school I got into a jam — you know — kid stuff. The old man kicked me out.”
I lighted a cigarette and leaned back.
“I went down to South America for about ten years, and then I went to Europe. I came back here two years ago and everything was all right for a while and then the old man and I got to scrapping again.”
I nodded.
“He’d had everything his own way too long. I opened this place about three months ago and took a lot of his gambling business away — a lot of the shipyard men and miners...”
McCary paused, sucked noisily at his cigar.
“Luke went clean off his nut,” he went on. “He thought I was going to take it all away from him...” McCary brought his big fist down hard on the desk. “And by the Christ! I am. Lowry’s the third man of mine in two weeks.
It’s plenty in the open now.”
I said: “How about Luke’s side?”
“We got one of the—” he said. “A runner.”