“I withdraw the Mexican!” said Scanlon ungrudgingly. “Dod! I believe you’re the best of the rotten bunch!”
“Go on, then: ‘Grafter, crook’——” prompted Baca.
“Why—er—really!” stammered Scanlon. Then he brightened. “‘There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said,’” he beamed, canting his head on one side with a flat, oily smile, “‘that I will not further detain you.’”
He seated himself, with a toothy, self-satisfied expression; but the allusion was lost on all except the delighted Baca.
In glum silence, Quinliven reached for a bottle and glared at the little Irishman, who smiled evilly back at him.
“There is one more point,” observed Baca in his best courtroom manner, “on which I touch with a certain delicacy and, as it were, with hesitation. I am reluctant to grieve further a spirit already distressed; but the fact is, gentlemen, our impulsive friend here”—he laid a gentle hand on Bennett’s shoulder and Bennett squeaked—“undertook yesterday to employ this man Jones—Neighbor Jones—to murder our friend Drake. I take this most unkindly.”
He teetered on his tiptoes; he twirled his eyeglasses; his hand made a pleasant jingle with key ring and coin; his face expressed a keen sense of well-being and social benevolence.
“As a matter of abstract principle, even before we had learned to love our young friend Drake, we decided that such a step was unnecessary and inexpedient; and so informed Mr. Bennett. But the idea of slaying Mr. Drake seems to have become an obsession with Mr. Bennett—or, as English Ben would put it, a fad. As English Ben would say, again, Mr. Bennett is a beastly blighter.”
He adjusted the eyeglasses and beamed round on his cowed and sullen confederates, goaded, for his delight, to madness and desperation; and on the one uncowed co-devil, the mordant and cynical Scanlon.
“Our young Eastern friend has endeared himself to our hearts. I do not exaggerate when I say that we feel quite an avuncular interest in his fortunes. We are deeply hurt by Mr. Bennett’s persistence; but let us not be severe. In this case retribution has been, as we might say, automatic, for the man Jones, by some means, has acquired an inkling of the posture in which our affairs lie in the little matter of the Drake estate; though I believe he suspects only Bennett and myself. Bennett, I judge, has talked too much. And—such is the wickedness and perfidy of the human mind—the man Jones makes a shameless demand on us for two thousand dollars, money current with the merchant, as the price of silence. Alas, that such things can be!”