"Twlenty dlolla."
"F. O. B. the Coryander and no extra charges?"
Ah Sing's inscrutable face screwed itself into a maze of unreadable wrinkles and lines.
"Him eat heap," he announced. "Five dlolla more for board."
"You go to blazes," Peter Gross replied cheerfully. "I'll look up a couple of men somewhere else or go short-handed if I have to."
Ah Sing made no reply and his impassive face did not alter its expressionless fixity. Peter Gross lazily pulled himself up in his chair and extended his right hand across the table. A ring with a big bloodstone in the center, a bloodstone cunningly chiseled and marked, rested on the middle finger.
"See that ring, Ah Sing?" he asked. "I got that down to Mauritius. What d'ye think it's worth?"
Ah Sing's long, claw-like fingers groped avariciously toward the ring. His tiny, fat-encased eyes gleamed with cupidity.
With a quick, cat-like movement, Peter Gross gripped one of the Chinaman's hands.
"Don't pull," he cautioned quickly as Ah Sing tried to draw his hand away. "I was going to tell you that there's a drop of adder's poison inside the bloodstone that runs down a little hollow pin if you press the stone just so—" He moved to illustrate.