“I’ll take a chance, Judith—for Vallory’s sake,” he thrust in boldly. “Won’t you do the same?”
“’Tis himself would kill you if he found you here. But what is it you’ll want to be saying about Davie?”
There was neither time nor opportunity for a guarded approach to his object, and Plegg plunged again.
“Listen, Judith: Black Jack has just been told something that gives him a strangle hold on Vallory; if he uses it, it will cost Vallory his place on this job, to say the least. I’m not saying that Dargin wouldn’t be justified, from his own point of view. Vallory would clean up these Powder Can joints if he had the authority—which he hasn’t, and won’t have. But he has said he would, and Dargin knows it.”
“How would Jack be using this thing that you haven’t tied a name to?” she asked.
“By passing it on to Lushing.”
“That black-hearted devil!” she burst out. “’Tis little but the back of my hand that I’m owing him!”
Plegg saw his opening and drove the wedge promptly.
“We all know Lushing,” he said; “you probably have good reasons for hating him.”
“Reasons, it is? Do you know what he’d be doing to me? For shame I can’t tell you. But if Jack Dargin had listened to him, it’s not here that I’d be, keeping house for my father!”