Cora’s eyes went blank. “You want to know a lot, don’t you?” she said, stretching out her leg and looking at her shoe that George had cleaned so industriously. “It mightn’t be healthy to know too much, Ernie.”
He nodded. His eyes, quick as a ferret’s, showed he was startled. “That’s right,” he said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know anything about you three. ’Ave another drink?”
Cora shook her head. “You’re not staying, are you, Ernie? Because we’ve got things to talk about.”
“Who, me? No, I’m not staying. I’ve got to get along. You know me, Cora, always on the move. Well, so long.” He grinned at George. “So long, palsy. Glad to ’ave met you,” and he left them.
George finished his beer. The whiskies and the beer gave him rather a pleasant floating feeling. He knew he was just a little tight.
“You told him a lot, didn’t you?” he said, looking at Cora questioningly.
“Ernie’s all right,” she said shortly. “He hates Crispin as much as we do. Besides, it’s as well to let them know we’re a mob now, not just a boy and a girl.”
This continual hinting worried George. What did she mean when she kept saying he was one of them? Now she was talking about a mob.
“I may be a bit dense,” he said slowly, “but I wish you’d explain. What mob? What do you mean by mob?”
She regarded him steadily. He again experienced the disconcerting feeling that she was looking inside his skull, even inside his pockets.