"First, are you the kind that lose their head over a good thing and land in jail?"
"Does my law-practice seem to indicate that I should be likely to overstep legal limits?"
"No, I guess it don't. But you can't always tell; we can't afford no hogs; and that sort of a man gives all his friends a black eye."
"But I say to you——"
"And next, I want to know, Mr. Dyker, whether you're the kind of a man that don't forget them that put him where he's at."
The low, slow spoken sentence ended with a sudden click of Mr. O'Malley's long, vulpine jaws. He leaned quickly forward across the table and fixed Wesley with the stiletto of his eyes.
Dyker met that gaze steadily. He leaned, in his turn, toward O'Malley, and his own voice dropped to a whisper. There was an exchange of a dozen sentences, and the two men had arrived at a perfect understanding: Dyker was as good as elected.
O'Malley pressed the call-button.
"Billy," he said to the bar-keeper, "have somebody run out and bring in Larry Riley off his beat. I want to see him."
As the bar-keeper nodded and disappeared, Dyker started to rise.