Mr. Molloy eyed the moat with a thoughtful frown.
"Well, I'll tell you, honey. I'm not so darned sure that I sort of kind of like bringing Chimp into a thing like this. You know what he is—as slippery as an eel that's been rubbed all over with axle grease. He might double-cross us."
"Not if we double-cross him first."
"But could we?"
"Sure we could. And, anyway, it's Chimp or no one. This isn't the sort of affair you can just go out into the street and pick up the first man you run into. It's a job where you've got to have somebody you've worked with before."
"All right, baby. If you say so. You always were the brains of the firm. If you think it's kayo, then it's all right by me and no more to be said. Cheese it! Here's his nibs back again."
Mr. Carmody was coming up the gravel path, his air that of a man who has made a great decision. He had evidently been following a train of thought, for he began abruptly at the point to which it had led him.
"There's only one thing," he said. "I don't like the idea of bringing in this friend of yours. He may be all right or he may not. You say you can trust him, but it seems to me the fewer people who know about this business, the better."
These were Mr. Molloy's sentiments, also. He would vastly have preferred to keep it a nice, cosy affair among the three of them. But it was no part of his policy to ignore obvious difficulties.
"I'd like that, too," he said. "I don't want to call in Chimp any more than you do. But there's this thing of getting the stuff out of the house."