"Good. It will be worth thinkin' over. You'll bless the day Jim Coast ran athwart your course."
"You seem to be taking a good deal for granted."
"I do. I always do. Until the present opportunity it was about the only thing I got a chance to take. You wouldn't of done me a good turn that night, if you hadn't been O.K. Will you have a drink of your own? It's good stuff—ten years in the wood, I see by the label, and I'm glad to get it, for whisky is scarcer than hen's teeth between this and the Rockies."
As Peter nodded he poured out the drinks and settled down in Peter's chair with the air of one very much at home.
"Well, Pete, what's yer answer to be?" he said at last. "You weren't any too polite when I left here. But I didn't think you'd turn me down altogether. And you're straight. I know that. I've been countin' on your sense of justice. How would you like to be treated the way I was treated by Mike McGuire?"
"I wouldn't like it."
"You just bet you wouldn't. You wouldn't stand for it, you wouldn't. I've got justice on my side and I've got the law—if I choose to use it—but I'd rather win this case as man to man—without its getting into the newspapers. That wouldn't matter much to a poor man like me, but it would make a heap of difference to a man who stands where McGuire does."
"That's true."
"Yes. And he knows it. He hasn't got a leg to stand on." Kennedy paused and looked Peter over coolly. Peter had been studying the situation critically, playing his game with some care, willing to placate his visitor and yet taking pains not to be too eager to gain his confidence. So he carefully lighted his cigarette while he debated his course of action.
"What makes you think that I'm in a different mood now from when you left here?"