"I haven't a pistol in my hip-pocket," he said evenly. "Never did carry one there, and wouldn't be likely to begin it if I was going gunning for a specialist like you. You'll have to take my word for that. Yes, and since I'm going to ask you to take my word—my unsupported word—for a number of other things, it may be in order to try to make you believe that my word, when I give it to you straight, isn't quite—that it isn't on just the same plane with the rest of my doings."
I was just a bit surprised that he didn't take out whatever it was that created that bulge in his hip-pocket, but hardly reckoned it worth while mentioning. I was fully assured that, far from seeking trouble, it was the one thing he had steadfastly resolved to avoid. That was enough for the moment. He was also about to speak of the one thing I was interested in above all others—the doping of Bell. There was every reason why I should encourage him to speak of that. The matter of Rona would come up in due course. He evidently had something to say about her also.
"Sit down," I said, and extended my cigarette case.
He declined my fat gold-tipped Egyptians, heavily salted with kief (another accursed habit I had picked up in Paris), and lighted a slender Sumatra cheroot from his own case. It was not as a move of precaution (I was through with all pretence of that now) that I set the big lounging chair I shoved up for him so that he would sit facing the light. I merely wanted to watch his face. Yet even that was not necessary to satisfy me of his sincerity, at least for the moment. His every tone and gesture was sufficient proof of that.
"In the matter of the value of my word...." Allen was losing no time in getting to the point. "In the time you have spent mooching about the Islands, Whitney, you have doubtless heard me referred to by a good many hard names, such as pirate, murderer, thief, blackguard, jail-bird, crook, and so on without end. You've heard all of these, haven't you?"
"All, and many others," I assented readily. His frankness rather appealed to me just then.
"Quite right. Yet I dare say you didn't happen to hear the name of liar included among the number. If you did, it was used by some cove who had a grudge against me, and didn't care whether he stuck to facts or not. I don't mean that I haven't put over a lot of crooked deals in my time, nor that I haven't come out with a gratuitous falsehood now and then when it suited my purpose. I don't claim to be a George Washington. But I do mean just this: that when I have deliberately assured a man that a thing was, or was not so, I was giving him the dead straight of it to the best of my knowledge. And that's the way I'm speaking when I tell you that I haven't a revolver on me, and that that dope I slipped into Bell's whisky at Kai had nothing to do with his playing out on the voyage. As for the reason of that ..."
Allen frowned slightly and ceased speaking for a few seconds. When he resumed it was not to take up the thread where he had dropped it.
"I don't know whether you'll have difficulty in believing it or not, Whitney," he went on after a half-dozen puffs at his slow-burning cheroot; "but this is the first time since I was packed out of Australia five years ago that I've tried to explain to anyone anything I've said or done—tried to make out a case for myself. That was simply because I didn't give a damn whether anyone approved of it or not. The reason I am doing it now—well, there are two reasons."
He puffed quietly for a few moments again, as though gathering his thoughts. Then he continued: "The first reason is that I owe it to you for the consideration you showed in the matter of not telling them at Kai what an ass I'd made of myself. That was dead white, Whitney. I've got to give it you for that. No one but a thoroughbred could have held his tongue for five minutes about a thing like that, especially seeing you were under no obligations of any kind whatever to me. And, for all I can learn, you've held your tongue for a month. How do I know? Well, I know about Kai (the only ones I care much about anyway) through a letter Jackson got off to me from Samarai—after he'd delivered you over to old 'Choppy' Tancred to bring south. Got it the night before I left Townsville. It wasn't much of a literary effort, but he managed to say a few things that—things that I knew he wouldn't have said if you had given them the facts—all the facts about my departure in the Cora. As for Australia.... If you had been dishing up any inside dope in this nest of old women and busybodies, no fear that it wouldn't have come to me before this. I know them. Their tongues will waft gossip from Melbourne to Port Darwin quicker'n the telegraph. My word, don't I know them!"