"You leave her to me," Mulready interposed, with a brutal laugh. "I'll guarantee to get her aboard, or..."
"Drop it, Dick!" Calendar advised quietly. "And go a bit easy with that bottle for five minutes, can't you?"
"Well, then," Stryker resumed, apparently concurring in Calendar's attitude, "w'y don't one of you tyke the stuff, go off quiet and dispose of it to a proper fence, and come back to divide. I don't see w'y that—"
"Naturally you wouldn't," chuckled Calendar. "Few people besides the two of us understand the depth of affection existing between Dick, here, and me. We just can't bear to get out of sight of each other. We're sure inseparable—since night before last. Odd, isn't it?"
"You drop it!" snarled Mulready, in accents so ugly that the listener was startled. "Enough's enough and—"
"There, there, Dick! All right; I'll behave," Calendar soothed him. "We'll forget and say no more about it."
"Well, see you don't."
"But 'as either of you a plan?" persisted Stryker.
"I have," replied Mulready; "and it's the simplest and best, if you could only make this long-lost parent here see it."
"Wot is it?"