un, and you deserved as much for
your cheek, you know. Otherwise, there's no harm done. If you hanker
to go to Boston, go you shall, and no thanks to me. Even if I do
pay the bill, I owe you a heap more than I'll ever be able to repay,
chances are. So take it easy; and I say, do brace up and make a bluff,
at least, of being on speaking terms. I'm not a bad sort, but I'm
going to stick to you like grim death to a sick nigger's bedside until
we know each other better. That's flat, and you may as well resign
yourself to it. And here we are."

Unwillingly, almost unaware, she had permitted herself to be drawn
through the labyrinth of ramps to the very threshold of the
restaurant, where, before she could devise any effectual means of
reasserting herself, a bland head waiter took them in tow and, at Blue
Serge's direction, allotted them a table well over to one side of the
room, out of earshot of their nearest neighbours.

Temporarily too fagged and flustered to react either to the danger or
to the novelty of this experience, or even to think to any good
purpose, Sally dropped mechanically into the chair held for her,
wondering as much at herself for accepting the situation as at the
masterful creature opposite, earnestly but amiably conferring with the
head waiter over the bill of fare.

Surely a strange sort of criminal, she thought, with his humour and
ready address, his sudden shifts from slang of the street to phrases
chosen with a discriminating taste in English, his cool
indifference to her threatening attitude, and his paradoxical pose of
warm--it seemed--personal interest in and consideration for a complete
and, to say the least, very questionable stranger.

She even went so far as to admit that she might find him very likable,
if only it were not for that affected little moustache and that
semi-occasional trick he practised of looking down his nose when he
talked.

On the other hand, one assumed, all criminals must seem strange types
to the amateur observer. Come to think of it, she had no standard to
measure this man by, and knew no law that prescribed for his kind
either dress clothing with an inverness and a mask of polished
imperturbability, or else a pea-jacket, a pug-nose, a cauliflower ear,
with bow legs and a rolling gait. . . .

"There, I fancy that will do. But hurry it along, please."

"Very good, sir--immediately."

The head waiter ambled off, and Blue Serge faced Sally with an odd,
illegible