“He had me fooled, too, Eddie. If Ben Stull didn’t get his number it don’t surprise me none, becuz he was 265 on the damn boat I crossed in, and I certainly picked him for New York.”
“Aw,” said the pasty-faced little man referred to as Ben Stull, “Eddie knows it all. He never makes no breaks, of course. You make ’em, Doc, but he doesn’t. That’s why me and him and you is travelling here—this minute—because the great Eddie Brandes never makes no breaks––”
“Go on and smoke and shut up,” said Brandes, with a slow, sidewise glance at Neeland, whose eyes remained fastened on the pages of “Les Bizarettes,” but whose ears were now very wide open.
“Smoke,” repeated Stull, “when this here Frenchman may make a holler?”
“Wait till I ask him,” said the man addressed as Doc, with dignity. And to Neeland:
“Pardong, musseer, permitty vous moi de fumy ung cigar?”
“Mais comment, donc, monsieur! Je vous en prie––”
“He says politely,” translated Doc, “that we can smoke and be damned to us.”
They lighted three obese cigars; Neeland, his eyes on his page, listened attentively and stole a glance at the man they called Brandes.
So this was the scoundrel who had attempted to deceive the young girl who had come to him that night in his studio, bewildered with what she believed to be her hopeless disgrace!