"But why not face facts? I intend to own the treasure when you have dug it up for me."
"You're of a sanguine temperament."
"Poof! Life is a game of cards. First you hold trumps, then they fall to me. It chances that now I hold the whip and ride on the crest of fortune's wave. Hope you don't mind mixed figures."
"You'll ride at the end of the hangman's rope," I prophesied.
"Let us look on the bright side."
"I'm trying to do that."
The man knew something that I did not. I was not bandying repartee with him for pleasure, but because I knew that if he talked long enough he would drop the card hidden up his sleeve.
What was his ace of trumps? How could he afford to sit back and let us dig up the gold? He could not be merely bluffing, for the man had been laughing at me from that first wave of the hand.
"It is unfortunate that you and I don't pull together, Mr. Sedgwick. We'd make an invincible team. You're the best enemy I ever met."
"And you're the worst I've met."