I gave my head another shake, shivering in the horror of his snaky touch as he quickly felt me over to make sure that I was telling him the truth.
“It embarrasses me,” he sort of hummed in his work, “to appear, in my actions, to doubt your veracity. That, I realize, as an ardent student of the science of psychology, is bad, very bad. However, business is business.… Who has the money?—one of your pals?”
I nodded.
“If I were of a prying nature,” he went on, “I might feel the impulse to press you for an explanation of how you arrived at your knowledge of the hidden money. However, that is neither here nor there.… I notice that you are without pants and hence without pockets.”
I nodded again.
“Is this the lock tender’s nightshirt?” [[216]]
I answered with another nod.
“Great indeed will be his perturbation when he learns that he has lost a nightshirt as well as a piano leg and three pairs of choice bed sheets! A worthy old gentleman, though a trifle obtuse. Still, he played a most excellent game of checkers.”
At this point the Strickers tumbled into the cave, hot and panting, amazed to find me in the company of a strange man.
But Bid made short work of recovering his nervy gab.