Bookie Skarvan's red-rimmed little gray eyes narrowed, and he swallowed hard.
“I've played square, I have!” he whined. “And I'm wiped out!”
“Yes—square as hell!” amended Dave Henderson.
“You don't give a damn!” shrilled Bookie Skarvan. “That's like you! That's like the lot of you! Where would you have been if I hadn't taken you up—eh?”
“God knows!” said Dave Henderson dispassionately. “I'm not blaming you for trying to make a crook of me.”
An apoplectic red heightened Bookie Skarvan's flushed and streaming face.
“Well, that's one thing I didn't make a bull of, at any rate!” he retorted viciously.
Dave Henderson shifted his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other with the tip of his tongue. There was a curious smile, half bitter, half whimsical, on his lips, as he leaned suddenly toward the other.
“I guess you're right, Bookie!” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I've only just found it out myself, so if you think there's any congrats coming to you and you're sore because you didn't get 'em before, you know why now.”
The scowl on Bookie Skarvan's face deepened, then cleared abruptly, and the man forced a nervous, wheezy chuckle.