Watkins nodded condescendingly. “Well,” he said consideringly, “that’s about a hundred and twenty to go on with.”
“There,” Traherne told him, placing a hand on the heap of notes, “that’s your first instalment.” Watkins eyed it haughtily. “Now, what about the balance? Shall we say a thousand pounds apiece?”
“A thousand apiece!” Watkins cried. “Three thousand pounds! You’re joking, Dr. Traherne! Wot would three thousand pounds be to me in England! W’y, I’d ’ave to take to valeting again. No, no, sir! If I’m to do this job, I must ’ave enough to make a gentleman of me.” He said it perfectly gravely. He meant it.
They stared at him in blank amazement Then, almost in unison they broke into irrepressible laughter. In peril of their lives, on terrible tenterhooks of sickening suspense, they laughed wildly—a hysterical outlet for pent-up emotions very different, it was in part, but too it was pure appreciation of the funniest thing they ever had heard. Antony Crespin shook with laughter, and swayed from side to side. Traherne tittered. The quick note of Lucilla’s mirth rang through the room like a delicate, musical bell.
Watkins was greatly offended—but too he was a little puzzled. “Well,” he said with a contemptuous scowl—no use showing too much “huff,” he reflected, for he intended to pocket that three hundred and twenty, and Crespin and Traherne were against him two to one—“you are the queerest lot as ever I come across. Your lives is ’anging by a ’air, and yet you can larf!”
“It’s your own fault, Watkins,” Lucilla Crespin gurgled, completely hysterical now. “Why will you be so funny?” A screaming note sharpened her laugh, and she broke into tears, and huddling down on the couch she buried her face on it, her body shaken with sobs.
Traherne got back to business. They were wasting too much time, he told himself sternly.
“I’m afraid what you ask is beyond our means, Watkins,” he said—careful not to say it too significantly—“But I double my bid—two thousand apiece.”
“You’ll ’ave to double it again, sir, and a little more,” Watkins said smugly. “You write me out an I.O.U. for fifteen thousand pounds, and I’ll see wot can be done.”
“Well,” Crespin blurted angrily, “you are the most consummate—”