With studied carelessness I took the doubloon on my thumb, flipped it and stuck it in my pocket.
"No wonder you were so willing to make a trade!" I said dryly. "One would say the liabilities outweigh the assets. As they have now descended to me, it remains to inquire whether they were honestly come by."
I had caught him fairly out of himself. He sat up as if stung, seemed ready to retort, and then yielded with a laugh—deep-throated tribute.
"You want an abstract of title?"
"My dear sir, I'm frank to say that's what I wanted from the first. I remembered you from Monte Carlo, you see."
With his elbows on the table he pressed his hands over his eyes absently, in that singular mannerism he had; and when they were clear he searched me again, gauging my significance in some alien train of thought.
"You seem entitled to it," he acknowledged slowly, "if only by your cheek, you know. Please note you came asking. I shouldn't care to punch your head later for calling me a liar."...
And this was the way I won his story at last.
"Do you happen to carry any good, live, working superstitions about you?" he began, and marked my blink of surprise. "No? It's a pity. Things must be so much simpler to a man who's satisfied to trust in laws outside himself and his own vision. A streak of fatalism, hey? What a comfort! No use kicking about anything—it's all been arranged for you. Or astrology, now: the stars were in the wrong house, which naturally accounts for Jemmy Jones being in the wrong pew. What'o, there's warm cheer for Jemmy!