"Pretending you've forgotten all about how that happened, too, eh?" An uglier sneer overcast Morphew's countenance. "I suppose you don't remember anything about how you two got to feeling your oats, after you'd been Lone Wolfing a while and making a good thing out of it with my protection, and thought you could give me the air and never miss me—"
"No! not really?"
"I suppose you don't remember how I nudged the Government into deporting Liane to teach her discipline and then, when I found you didn't handle any better with her away, let her sneak back, gave you another chance, and when that didn't work made Town so hot for you both you had to take a running jump off the Battery . . . I suppose it's only natural you wouldn't remember little things like that."
"And very handsome it is of you to suppose so, and prove you do by itemizing in such minute detail all I pretend to have forgotten."
"That line of talk won't get you anywhere with me, Lanyard. Sarcastic cracks won't stop me checking up to show you where you get off trying to pull that lost memory stall on me. Why!" Morphew snorted in disgust—"you must think I'm easy."
"But no, monsieur! my memory is hardly so bad as all that."
"It's only on the blink when you want it to be, I guess."
"What it really needs now," Pagan put in with animation, "is for you to get yourself lammed over the bean again." He grasped the neck of the decanter suggestively. "I hate to do it, but for a friend . . . Just say the word, Lanyard, and I'll crown you King of Cracksmen."
"Shut up," Morphew brutally snapped.
With a little moan the sycophant applied himself anew to the soothing Scotch; and for a few moments no more was said, while Lanyard, sitting forward, bent a thoughtful frown to the rug at his feet, and Morphew studied his man with a subtile smile.