"What's more, if there is a cool hand it's Mr. Graham, it isn't me. I am a poor, starving, police-ridden devil, being hounded to hell, full pelt, by a hundred other devils--but, Bruce Graham, what are you?"
They turned to the man who was thus addressed.
At the moment of interruption he had been levering a strip of wainscot from its place with the aid of the inserted chisel. He still kept one hand upon the handle, holding the hammer with the other, while he drew his body back against the wall as close as it would go, and, with pallid cheeks and startled eyes, he stared at the intruder as if he had been some straggler from the spiritual world. From between his lips, which seemed to tremble, there came a single word--
"Ballingall!"
"Yes, Ballingall! That's my name. And what's yours--cur, hound, thief? By God! there have been people I've used badly enough in my time, but none worse than you've used me."
"You are mistaken."
"Am I? It looks like it. What are you doing here?"
"You know what I'm doing."
"By God! I do--you're right there. And it's because you know I know, that, although you're twice my size, and have got all the respectability and law of England at your back, you stand there shivering and shaking, afraid for your life at the sight of me."
"I am not afraid of you. I repeat that you are mistaken."