The one who had not yet spoken broke in soothingly:
"Lefty just means he hit you hard. Why no somebody knife him?"
The four men asked each other the question with their eyes and, receiving no answer, looked confused.
"Why no you, Heppel?" demanded Koppy. "I had no time."
"Time wasn't hanging about loose when he let drive," grinned Lefty
Werner.
"Mr. Conrad took your knife, Koppy," soothed Heppel. "You couldn't."
Morani, unobserved, had drawn from some hidden part of him a long stiletto and was whetting it slowly on the palm of his hand. Fascinated, they watched.
"We were a hundred to two," reflected Koppy in a low voice; and his eyes were puzzled.
That was as far as they ever got in the solution of the eternal puzzle of how one man holds a hundred under his thumb and sleeps the sleep of the unafraid.
"Which ain't quite to the point," Werner reminded them, "with this meeting due in half an hour. In the first place, are you sure the boss ain't on?"