"You take too much on yourself, Slyne," said he, eyeing that gentleman with extreme disfavour. "You seem to think you're the whole show here, though you're nothing but a hanger-on, as I've told you before. Let's have a good deal less of it, or--We can get on just as well, or even better--without you, you know."
Slyne turned a contemptuous stare on him. "So that's the idea now, is it!" he remarked, without any sign of heat. "You two think it's a case of dog eat dog now, do you! And--after you've got rid of me, who picked you both up out of the gutter, you'll be at each other's throats. You're a great pair!"
His nonchalance incensed the old man, as he had intended it should.
"I want none of your damned lip," declared Captain Dove, glaring at him, "you precious upstart! You're nothing but a beggar on horseback yourself, for all your grand airs. Me and this other gentleman are both sick-tired of them. You're one too many--"
"I'm one too many for you two, at any rate; and you may both stake your last cent on that," Slyne told him with a composure admirable under the circumstances. "You surely don't imagine, do you, that I'm here on any such unsafe footing as you are! I thought you knew me well enough, Dove, to be sure that I'd leave you no opportunity to go back on your bargain with me."
"To hell with you and your bargains!" cried Captain Dove: and then, restraining his rage, lowered his voice again. "The mistake you've always made with me, Slyne, has been to take me for an old fool--as you've very often called me to my face. You think I'm in my dotage. But--I'm not too old to show _you_ a trick or two yet, if you and I come to grips. And, as for being such a fool as you seem to think me--you wait and see! I've a card or two up my sleeve, Mr. Slyne, that'll maybe euchre your game for you, if you try to bluff too high!"
Slyne sat back and studied the old man's face. Captain Dove had made that same mysterious threat on board the _Olive Branch_ in Genoa, before they had started out on their present adventure. It had disconcerted Slyne then. It disconcerted him still more now.
"Don't you think that you're a little inclined to overrate your importance and--er--capacity, Mr. Slyne?" put in Mr. Jobling acidly during the pause, involuntary on Slyne's part. "All your ideas are no doubt based on the documents we mutually signed in Monte Carlo; and you are probably not aware, as I am--now that I have a clearer insight into your motives--that they amount to neither more nor less than a conspiracy to defraud. You would be well advised, believe me, to put them all in the fire."