“That is a good ‘spiel,’ my dear chap,” he said. “It’s as good a ‘spiel’ as your type-writer friend used to rattle off when he thought he saw a customer; but I’m not a customer.”
Tembarom looked at him interestedly for about ten seconds. His hands were thrust into his trousers’ pockets, as was his almost invariable custom. Absorption and speculation, even emotion and excitement, were usually expressed in this unconventional manner.
“You don’t believe a darned word of it,” was his sole observation.
“Not a darned word,” Palliser smiled. “You are trying a ‘bluff,’ which doesn’t do credit to your usual sharpness. It’s a bluff that is actually silly. It makes you look like an ass.”
“Well, it’s true,” said Tembarom; “it’s true.”
Palliser laughed again.
“I only said it made you look like an ass,” he remarked. “I don’t profess to understand you altogether, because you are a new species. Your combination of ignorance and sharpness isn’t easy to calculate on. But there is one thing I have found out, and that is, that when you want to play a particularly sharp trick you are willing to let people take you for a fool. I’ll own you’ve deceived me once or twice, even when I suspected you. I’ve heard that’s one of the most successful methods used in the American business world. That’s why I only say you look like an ass. You are an ass in some respects; but you are letting yourself look like one now for some shrewd end. You either think you’ll slip out of danger by it when I make this discovery public, or you think you’ll somehow trick me into keeping my mouth shut.”
“I needn’t trick you into keeping your mouth shut,” Tembarom suggested. “There’s a straight way to do that, ain’t there?” And he indelicately waved his hand toward the documents pertaining to the Cedric Company.
It was stupid as well as gross, in his hearer’s opinion. If he had known what was good for him he would have been clever enough to ignore the practical presentation of his case made half an hour or so earlier.
“No, there is not,” Palliser replied, with serene mendacity. “No suggestion of that sort has been made. My business proposition was given on an entirely different basis. You, of course, choose to put your personal construction upon it.”