Читать книгу The Running Fight онлайн

49 страница из 74

Flomerfelt's smile was a sneer. In turn, he rose and looked his chief full in the face, his own small, ferret eyes alight with contempt.

"It may have taken a good man to conceive the scheme, but it took a better man to put these things into execution, to——"

Wilkinson laughed.

"To do the dirty work," he interposed, contemptuously.

Flomerfelt nodded.

"Have it that way if you will, chief," he assented. "It's dirty work any way you may put it. However, don't you forget one thing, it was I that did it—and doing it, I did what no one else could do."

For a brief interval the two men stood glaring at each other. It was Flomerfelt who, at the last, lowered his eyes.

"Well, have it so, Flomerfelt," Wilkinson was speaking now, "we won't quarrel. Perhaps we do belong together—at any rate, you get pay enough...."

"No, not enough," Flomerfelt mused half-aloud, for his thoughts had travelled through the closed door, into the hall without, had climbed up the stairs and were centred on Leslie Wilkinson in the room above.