It may have been credulous of me, but I felt the boy was telling the truth, and I was deeply sorry he had not stuck to it. So, rather harshly, I said:
“They didn't want you to tell them you were a brother to Adolph Meyer, either. Why did you think you could get away with anything like that?”
Talbot did not answer.
“Why?” I insisted.
The boy laughed impudently.
“How the devil was I to know he hadn't a brother?” he protested. “It was a good name, and he's a Jew, and two of the six who were in the game are Jews. You know how they stick together. I thought they might stick by me.”
“But you,” I retorted impatiently, “are not a Jew!”
“I am not,” said Talbot, “but I've often SAID I was. It's helped—lots of times. If I'd told you my name was Cohen, or Selinsky, or Meyer, instead of Craig Talbot, YOU'D have thought I was a Jew.” He smiled and turned his face toward me. As though furnishing a description for the police, he began to enumerate:
“Hair, dark and curly; eyes, poppy; lips, full; nose, Roman or Hebraic, according to taste. Do you see?”
He shrugged his shoulders.