“Here’s crime,” I said darkly, as I touched glasses with O’Flather.
The man with the bull-dog face and the brindled hair knotched his sandy eyebrows in interrogation.
“Down with the police,” I went on, taking a gloomy gulp of grenadine.
“Wot d’ye mean?” said my boon companion, suspending the operation of a syphon to regard me suspiciously.
“O’Flather,” I lowered my voice to a mysterious whisper—“have you never longed to revel in violence and blood? Have you never longed to be a villain?”
“Can’t say as I have,” said O’Flather, somewhat relieved, proceeding to sample the brandy and soda I had ordered for him.
“Is there no one you hate?” I suggested; “hate with a deadly hatred. No one you wish to be revenged on, terribly revenged on?”
“Can’t say as there is,” said the fat man thoughtfully. “But wait; yes, by the blasting blazes, there’s the skirt wot put my show on the blink. I’d give a month in chokey to get even with her.”
“What would you do if you met her?” I demanded.
“Wot would I do?” he snarled, and his cod-mouth opened to show those teeth like copper and verdigris clenched in venomous hate; “I’d do her up, that’s wot I would do.” He banged his big, fat fist down on the table. “I’d pound her face in. I’d beat her to a jelly. I’d leave about as much life in her as a sick fly.”