“Listen, Ernie,” she said. “I want a place for a week.”
“Do you now? What makes you think I’ve got a place for you?”
“Come off it, Ernie. You must have dozens of flats in the West End.”
“And they cost me a packet, too,” Little Ernie said darkly. “I only want it for a week.”
“’Ow much can you pay?”
“Nothing.”
“’Ave an ’eart.”
She looked at him. He seemed to read something in that look, because his ferrety eyes lit up.
“Why don’t you get wise, ducks?” he said. “You ain’t got any dough. Why don’t you get in the game?”
While this conversation had been going on, George sat listening, a dull, brooding expression on his face. He was trying to imagine how Frank Kelly or any of the other big shot gangsters would have handled Little Ernie. He was sure they wouldn’t have stood a rotten little pimp like him for five seconds. All the same, Little Ernie knew too much: he might also he useful. It wouldn’t do to get too tough with him. But it wouldn’t do, either, for him to think that George was a stooge who sat and listened and was not consulted.