"Then there's good in the old bean yet," Phinuit interrupted in wasted irony.
"One cherishes that hope, monsieur....But the trail I left for you to follow! I would be an ass indeed if I thought you would fail to find it. When one borrows a rowboat at Plum Island Light without asking permission--government property, too--and leaves it moored to a dock on the Greenport waterfront; when one arrives in Greenport clothed in shirt and trousers only, and has to bribe its pardonably suspicious inhabitants with handfuls of British gold--which they are the more loath to accept in view of its present depreciation--in order to secure a slopchest coat and shoes and transportation by railway to New York; when a taxicab chauffeur refuses a sovereign for his fare from the Pennsylvania Station to this hotel, and one is constrained to borrow from the management--why, I should say the trail was fairly broad and well blazed, mes amis."
"Be that as it may," said Phinuit--"here in a manner of speaking we all are, at least, the happy family reunited and ready to talk business."
"And no hard feelings, Monsieur Phinuit?"
"There will be none"--Monk's eyebrows were at once sardonic and self-satisfied; which speaks volumes for their versatility--"at least, none on our side--when we are finished."
"That makes me more happy still. And you, Liane?"
The woman gave a negligent movement of pretty shoulders.
"One begins to see how very right you are, Michael," she said wearily--"and always were, for that matter. If one wishes to do wrong, one should do it all alone... and escape being bored to death by the... Oh! the unpardonable stupidity of associates.
"But no, messieurs!" she insisted with temper as Monk and Phinuit simultaneously flew signals of resentment. "I mean what I say. I wish I had never seen any of you, I am sick of you all! What did I tell you when you insisted on coming here to see Monsieur Lanyard? That you would gain nothing and perhaps lose much. But you would not listen to me, you found it impossible to believe there could be in all the world a man who keeps his word, not only to others but to himself. You are so lost in admiration of your own cleverness in backing that poor little ship off the rocks and letting her fill and sink, so that there could be no evidence of wrong-doing against you, that you must try to prove your wits once more where they have always failed"--she illustrated with a dramatic gesture--"against his! You say to yourselves: Since we are wrong, he must be wrong; and since that is now clearly proved, that he is as wrong in every way as we, then it follows naturally that he will heed our threats and surrender to us those jewels...Those jewels!" she declared bitterly, "which we would have been fortunate never to have heard of!"
She threw herself back in her chair and showed them a scornful shoulder, compressing indignant lips to a straight, unlovely line, and beating out the devil's tattoo with her slipper.