“Is it?” said T. Tembarom. “Well,” he added slowly, “I guess Americans are pretty good business men.”
Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines, as he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased.
He went on in smooth, casual laudation:
“No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly well what he’s going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough,” he added significantly, “about Hutchinson’s affair. You ‘got in on the ground floor’ there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!”
Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased grin.
“I’m a man of the world, my boy—the business world,” Palliser commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. “I know New York, though I haven’t lived there. I’m only hoping to. Your air of ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you,” which agreeable implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and impressed ought to have fetched the bounder if any thing would.
T. Tembarom’s grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser’s first impression was that he had “fetched” him. But when he answered, though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of his betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was something—a shade of something—not entirely satisfactory in his face and nasal twang.
“Well, I guess,” he said, “New York did teach a fellow not to buy a gold brick off every con man that came along.”
Palliser was guilty of a mere ghost of a start. Was there something in it, or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his being? He stared at him a moment, and saw that there was something under the words and behind his professedly flattered grin—something which must be treated with a high hand.
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed haughtily. “I don’t like your tone. Do you take me for what you call a ’con man’?”