"These digs are not what I'm accustomed to, doctor," he said, taking a seat. "I'm frank, you see; but of course I retire only to jump better. Isn't that how it goes? We jumped too soon, you see; and that was you. If it had not been for that fool Pierce! Twice the essential ass played into your hands. You were pretty smart, though I gave you a lead. There I was the fool."
"Well, Mr. Holgate, as between man and man, you were," I said.
He laughed. "Oh, it will work out all right, but it makes it bloody. Now, there was no need of blood in this little job, not if it had been rightly managed, and I'll take blame for that. No, you were my mistake."
He looked at me in his tense unblinking way, as if he would have torn out of me on that instant what I thought and what I really was.
"I shall not be your last," I said indifferently.
"Have a drink," he said. "We've got some good champagne, all under lock and key, you bet, my son. That's not going to be my mistake, at any rate. I've not lived forty years for nothing. I'm going to pull this off."
"Thank you," said I. "But it's business I've come on."
"Business and 'the boy' go together in the city, I've heard," he answered. "Well, is it terms you want?"
"Oh, dear, no," I replied. "Only an affair of mercy. You've got two wounded men, and there's McCrae."
He looked down for a moment. "McCrae was another mistake, but not mine," he said. "You can't do any good to McCrae. But you can see the others, if you will. Not that that's what you've come for. Shall I tell you what, doctor? You've come like the gentlemen who went to the Holy Land, and came back carrying grapes, eh? I remember the picture when I was a boy—a precious huge bunch, too. Well, you can have the grapes if you'll take 'em in a liquefied form, and carry them in your belly."