“How can you, if you gave your last cent to that taxi driver?”
“You tipped me very liberally for carrying your baggage aboard,” Andrew Bowers retorted slyly.
“Ouch!” cried Mr. Webster, and laughed. The very next instant he was provoked at himself for having done so. That laugh gave the brigand Andrew a decided advantage, for it placed Webster on defensive ground. He was convinced of this when the brigand said:
“Thanks for that laugh, Mr. Webster. It arouses hope in my sad heart. I have outraged your patience, your privacy, and your pocketbook—yet you laughed. Bueno. I will be equally good-natured and forgive you for questioning my sincerity in the matter of dispensing my hospitality; even the little slur cast on my veracity in the matter of my finances shall pass unnoticed.”
“I think you're too cool, young man,” Webster retorted. “Just a trifle too cocksure. Up to the present moment you have proffered no evidence why you should not be adjudged a cad, and I do not like cads and must decline to permit one to occupy the same stateroom at my expense. You are clever and amusing and I laughed at you, but at the same time my sense of humour is not so great as to cause me to overlook your impudence and laugh with you. Now, if you have anything to say, say it quickly, because you're going to go away from here—in a hurry.”
“I plead guilty to the indictment, Mr. Webster, and submit as an excuse the fact that desperate circumstances require desperate measures. I am not begging my way, neither am I beating it, for the reason that both forms of travel are repugnant to me. I am merely taking advantage of certain fortuitous circumstances to force you, an entire stranger, to extend to me a credit of fifty dollars until we reach San Buenaventura when you will be promptly reimbursed. I had thought,” he added sadly, “that my face might prove ample security for a fifty-dollar loan. There has never been a crook in my family and I have never been charged with a penal offence or been in jail.”
“It is not my habit,” Webster retorted stiffly, “to extend credit to strangers who demand it.”
“I do not demand it, sir. I beg it of you, and because I cannot afford to be refused I took care to arrange matters so that you would not be likely to refuse my request. Really, I do not mean to be cocksure and impudent, but before you throw me out I'd like to let you in on a secret about yourself.”
“Well?”
“You're not going to throw me out.”