“Oh, you pulled the soft stuff, eh?” Taylor said. “Well, she tried to double-cross me and that don’t pay, Denby. She’ll find that out, all right.”
Denby assumed a certain confidential air. “Look here, Taylor,” he said, “so long as she did the decent thing by me, I’d like to see her out of this. You’ve got me, and you’ve got the pearls—Why not let her go?”
Taylor shook his head. He did not signalize his triumphs by the freeing of captives or the giving of rewards. “I guess not,” he returned with his sourest look. “You’ve both given me a lot of unnecessary trouble, and I think a little trip down south ought to fix you two comfortably. What do you say to five years in Atlanta? Fine winter climate they say.”
“Then I guess we are up against it;” Denby sighed.
“You are, son,” Taylor assured him; “right up against it.”
“Take it out on me,” the other implored; “ease up on her. It isn’t as if she were a grafter, either. Why, I offered her twenty thousand dollars to square it.”
“Tried to bribe a Government official, eh?” Taylor observed. “That don’t make it any better for you.”
“Oh, you can’t prove it against me,” Denby returned easily.
“Twenty thousand dollars,” Taylor muttered; “twenty thousand dollars! So you were trying to smuggle it in for the Harringtons, then?”
“I hate bringing names in,” said Denby, looking at him shrewdly.