“What'd you pay old Sanderson twenty-five thousan' for? Will you answer that?”
“Bill, you give me a pain,” was Smoke's reply. “I came over here for a country residence, so to say, and here are you and a gang trying to cross-examine me when I'm looking for peace an' quietness an' breakfast. What's a country residence good for, except for peace and quietness?”
“You ain't answered the question,” Bill Saltman came back with rigid logic.
“And I'm not going to, Bill. That affair is peculiarly a personal affair between Dwight Sanderson and me. Any other question?”
“How about that crowbar an' steel cable then, what you had on your sled the other night?”
“It's none of your blessed and ruddy business, Bill. Though if Shorty here wants to tell you about it, he can.”
“Sure!” Shorty cried, springing eagerly into the breach. His mouth opened, then he faltered and turned to his partner. “Smoke, confidentially, just between you an' me, I don't think it IS any of their darn business. Come on in. The life's gettin' boiled outa that coffee.”
The door closed and the three hundred sagged into forlorn and grumbling groups.
“Say, Saltman,” one man said, “I thought you was goin' to lead us to it.”
“Not on your life,” Saltman answered crustily. “I said Smoke would lead us to it.”