“How much hush-cash d’yeh pay him?”
“I?”
“Yaas, you! Come on, now, Angy. What does he stick you up for per month?”
Puma’s face became empurpled: “He is a scoundrel,” he said thickly. “Me––I wish to God and Jesus Christ I saw the last of him!” He got up, and his step was lithe as a leopard’s as he paced the room, ranging the four walls as though caged. And, for the first time, then Skidder realised that this velvet-eyed, velvet-footed man might possibly be rather dangerous––dangerous to antagonise, dangerous to be associated with in business.
“Say,” he blurted out, “what else did you let me in for when I put my money into your business? Think I’m going to be held up by any game like that? Think 203 I’m going to stand for any shake-down from that gang? Watch me.”
Puma stopped and looked at him stealthily: “What is it you would do, Elmer?”
But Skidder offered no suggestion. He remained, however, extremely uneasy. For it was plain enough that Puma had been involved in dealings sufficiently suspicious to warrant Government surveillance.
All Skidder’s money and real estate were now invested in Super-Pictures. No wonder he was anxious. No wonder Puma, also, seemed worried.
For, whatever he might have done in the past of a shady nature, now he had become prosperous and financially respectable and, if let alone, would doubtless continue to make a great deal of money for Skidder as well as for himself. And Skidder, profoundly troubled, wondered whether his partner had ever been guiltily involved in German propaganda, and had escaped Government detection only to fall a victim, in his dawning prosperity, to blackmailing associates of earlier days.
“That mutt Sondheim looks like a bad one to me, and the other guy––Kastner,” he observed gloomily.