“I beg your pardon?”
“The Beach gook,” explained Mr. Cootes, “has got something wrong with the lining of his stomach, and if I hadn’t made my getaway he’d be talking about it yet.”
“If you fail to find entertainment and uplift in first-hand information about Comrade Beach’s stomach, you must indeed be hard to please. I am to take it, then, that you came snorting out here, interrupting my daydreams, merely in order to seek my sympathy?”
Mr. Cootes gazed upon him with a smouldering eye.
“I came to tell you I suppose you think you’re darned smart.”
“And very nice of you, too,” said Psmith, touched. “A pretty compliment, for which I am not ungrateful.”
“You got that gun away from me mighty smoothly, didn’t you?”
“Since you mention it, yes.”
“And now I suppose you think you’re going to slip in ahead of me and get away with that necklace? Well, say, listen, lemme tell you it’ll take someone better than a half-baked string-bean like you to put one over on me.”
“I seem,” said Psmith, pained, “to detect a certain animus creeping into your tone. Surely we can be trade rivals without this spirit of hostility. My attitude towards you is one of kindly tolerance.”