“You lie! I know that in this game against Dick Sherwood, in which you used my girl, you were the real leader!”
“Well—even if I did use your girl, I only used her the way I found her.”
“You lie again! I know how your kind work: cleverly putting crooked ideas into girls' minds, and exciting their imagination, so they'll work with you. Your case is closed.” He turned to his one-time friend. “What have you got to say for yourself, Jimmie Carlisle?”
Old Jimmie believed that his last hour was come. He showed something of the defiant, almost maniacal courage of a coward who realizes he can retreat no farther.
“What I got to say, Joe Ellison,” he snarled in a sudden rage which bared his yellow teeth, “is that I'm even with you at last!”
“Even with me? What for?”
“For the way you double-crossed me in nineteen-one in that Gordon business. You never gave me a dime—said the thing had fallen down—yet I know there was a big haul!”
“I told you the truth. That Gordon thing was a fizzle.”
“There's where you're lying! It was a clean-up! And I knew you'd been cheating me out of my share in other deals!”
“You're absolutely wrong, Jimmie Carlisle. But if you thought that, why didn't you have it out with me at the time?”