“Why is it you talk foolish?” retorted Puma sharply. “Drag? Did Sondheim say–––”
“No! I say it. I ask you what have those crazy nuts got on you that you stand for all this rumpus?”
Puma’s lustrous eyes, battered but still magnificent, fixed themselves on Skidder.
“Go out,” he said briefly to his stenographer. Then, when the girl had gone, and the glass door closed behind her, he turned heavily and gazed at Skidder some more. And, after a few moments’ silence: “Go on,” he said. “What did Sondheim say about me?”
Skidder’s small, shifty eyes were blinking furiously and his essentially suspicious mind was also operating at full speed. When he had calculated what to say he took the chance, and said:
“Sondheim gave me to understand that he’s got such a hell of a pull with you that I can’t kick him out of my property. What do you know about that, Angelo?”
“Go on,” said Puma impatiently, “what else did he say about me?”
“Ain’t I telling you?”
“Tell more.”