Angel disregarded Jimmy’s warning frown. He was determined that the better side of his strange friend’s character should be made evident to the girl.
“Jimmy faced death in a particularly unpleasant form to secure the packet, Miss Kent,” he said.
“Then I forbid any further risk,” she said spiritedly. “I thought I had made it clear that I would not accept favors at your friend’s hands; least of all do I want the favor of his life.”
Jimmy heard her unmoved. He had a bitter tongue when he so willed, and he chose that moment.
“I do not think you can too strongly impress upon Miss Kent the fact that I am an interested party in this matter,” he said acidly. “As she refused my offer to forego my claim to a share of the fortune, she might remember that my interest in the legacy is at least as great as hers. I am risking what I risk, not so much from the beautifully quixotic motives with which she doubtless credits me, as from a natural desire to help myself.”
She winced a little at the bluntness of his speech; then recognizing she was in the wrong, she grew angry with herself at her indiscretion.
“If the book is—where these papers were, it can be secured,” Jimmy continued, regaining his suavity. “If the professor is still alive he will be found, and by to-morrow I shall have in my possession a list of every book that has ever been written by a professor of anything.”
Some thought tickled him, and he laughed for the second time that afternoon.
“There’s a fine course of reading for us all,” he said with a little chuckle. “Heaven knows into what mysterious regions the literary professor will lead us. I know one professor who has written a treatise on Sociology that runs into ten volumes, and another who has spoken his mind on Inductive Logic to the extent of twelve hundred closely-printed pages. I have in my mind’s eye a vision of three people sitting amidst a chaos of thoughtful literature, searching ponderous tomes for esoteric references to bolts, door, mouth, et cetera.”
The picture he drew was too much for the gravity of the girl, and her friendship with the man who was professedly a thief, and by inference something worse, began with a ripple of laughter that greeted his sally.