“Damn good,” he granted to me. “You got any idea of what you beat me out of?”
“No,” I said, doing my best to stand up to him; and while I talked to him, I thought, “He warned me. He told me to do it. That wasn’t Keeban, of course. Jerry had the body then. Jerry must come into him at times. Then Jerry knows and goes horrified at what Keeban does. Jerry himself sent me that warning to try to stop him. He did the same in the killing of Win Scofield.”
He went on talking, “You beat me out of more than you’d make in the bean business if you lived as many more years as you’re going to live minutes. You like that girl over there?”
I didn’t reply to that; but he went on as if I had.
“Good you do. She’s traveling right along with you. Plenty of space for two in the old glass room. Now Stenewisc, he was simply a fool.”
“Stenewisc, who made the gas?” I asked him. I was trying to keep him talking for the general reason that every minute gained was another minute lived; and besides, below everything else in my mind, was the idea that something might turn this body back from Keeban to Jerry again. I got to figuring like this:
“Years ago, when we were at college, he started being Keeban for a couple of short periods which confused him afterwards. He was Jerry nearly all the time. Then he stopped turning into Keeban until that night of the Sparlings’ dance. He became Keeban for a time, then he was Jerry again when he came home to talk to me, after which he went back to being Keeban. He has stayed Keeban most of the time since, especially through that Scofield business; but once or twice he became Jerry. But now, except when he sent those two notes to me, he’s been Keeban all the time.”
“Stenewisc, he never had any sense,” he went on to me. “He had the gas during the war. But would he sell it to the army or to the English or the French or, if he didn’t like that side, would he sell to the other? He would not. He wouldn’t help any government anywhere; he wouldn’t help a government even to wipe out the rest. He was set to do the wiping himself, personally. He had his big idea.”
I kept quiet; and he stood close. This was like Jerry himself, this impulse to talk on.
“He figured he could croak everybody—give him a little more time and plenty of gas. Everybody in New York, anyway.” Keeban laughed. “Lot of good that would do. Get up!” he told me.