“Aren't you on the wrong side of this barricade?”
“Smart as ever,” Akers observed, watching him intently. “As it happens, I'm here because I want to be, and because I can't get where I ought to be.”
For a furious moment Willy Cameron thought he was referring to his wife, but there was something strange in Akers' tone.
“I could be useful to you fellows,” he was saying, “but it seems you don't want help. I've been trying to see the Mayor all night.”
“What do you want to see him about?”
“I'll tell him that.”
Willy Cameron hesitated.
“I think it's a trick, Akers.”
“All right. Then go to the devil!”
He turned away sullenly, leaving Willy Cameron still undecided. It would be like the man as he knew him, this turning informer when he saw the strength of the defense, and Cameron had a flash of intuition, too, that Akers might see, in this new role, some possible chance to win back with Lily Cardew. He saw how the man's cheap soul might dramatize itself.