“Drop the play acting with me, Jimmy.”
“Say, look here, mister man, it was all right for you to make a play with that name that my dad used to call me—at first; but it’s getting tiresome,” exclaimed Duryea, with a fine show of rancour. “I’m Jimmy, all right, only nobody calls me by that name now. I’m Mr. Dinwiddie, particularly to strangers, if you don’t mind. I’ll thank you to address me by that name. What kind of a game are you up to, anyway? Blackmail?”
The effrontery of the man was phenomenal.
Instead of being offended by it, Nick Carter was amused; and he could not resist a small sense of admiration, too, for Duryea’s pluck, under the circumstances. He resolved to meet him on the ground he had selected.
“All right, Mr. Dinwiddie,” he said, smiling. “It is my wish to discuss a certain person whom we both knew in the past. If you prefer to speak of that person in the third person, I see no reason for not humoring you. But, before we continue with the subject, I wish to warn you that I am about through with your pose. I will talk in the third person about that other man, but you’ve got to talk—or something will happen.”
“How melodramatic. Look here, Carter, what are you driving at?”
“I’m driving at one Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea.”
“Oh; you are! And who might he be? Or who might he have been? Is he a dead one, or is he alive, Mr. Carter? You interest me. Really, you do.”
“He has long since been supposed to be dead, but just now he seems to be very much alive.”
“That’s where you are dead wrong, Carter. Believe me, you are. Dead men do not return. Neither do they discuss tales of themselves. Bare-Faced Jimmy, eh? What a name!”