"If you'd had the common decency to trust me at all, I wouldn't be missing my gat this minute."
"Common decency not being the same thing, one takes it, as common sense?"
"You don't have to worry," Crane insisted with an air of some aggrievance. "If I can't round you up without a gun, you can run loose and wild for all of me."
"On that understanding, then . . ." Lanyard tossed the weapon back to the bed. "Forgive a simple precaution not inspired by any real doubt of your good disposition toward an old friend, or your sporting attitude toward a professional antagonist . . ."
The broad of his back was a shining mark for Crane as he strode away to an adjoining room, where he made a light, and from which he presently returned with a box of cigars and a musical glass.
Crane had not stirred. The pistol rested where it had fallen. Lanyard tendered the drink and the open box.
"Astonishing," he mused, "what a sound taste in cigars one finds prevalent among members of a venal and brutalized constabulary!"
He remarked in pained astonishment that the bed was quaking with Crane's silent mirth.
"Don't mind me!" the detective protested: "it's myself I'm giving the laugh, not you. I've been figuring for some time now, you were about due to stage a gaudy resurrection; but this beats my craziest notions of what the show would be like. I'm a pretty old mule of a dick, and a tough audience for trick stuff, but I've got to hand it to you, Lanyard: I've never yet been able to dope out what your next dodge would be nor how you'd pull it. So, whenever you get all set to explain what the hell you mean by sitting there and looking like that—well, you needn't be afraid I'll walk out on you."
"You don't like my make-up?" Lanyard drew a long face over his vestments. "Do you know? I rather fancied it. These jibs seem so appropriate to my newly adopted calling. Behold in me, if you please, my dear Crane, a seafaring man fully three weeks of age."