Alias, page 239 by Louis Joseph Vance
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be found; and when it's all over, we'll split fifty-fifty. What d'you say?"
"Extremely ingenious, monsieur, but unfortunately impracticable."
"That's the last thing," stated the disappointed whisper, "I ever thought a man like you would say."
"But it is obvious. We do not know each other."
"You mean, you can't trust me?"
"For that matter: how can you be sure you can trust me?"
"Oh, I guess I can size up a square guy when I see him."
"Many thanks. But why should I trust you, when you will not even be quite frank with me?"
"How's that? Haven't I----"
"One moment: you refuse to name the source of your astonishingly detailed information concerning this affair--myself included. You wish me to believe you simply assume I am at odds with Captain Monk and his friends. I admit it is true. But how should you know it? Ah, no, my friend! either you will tell me how you learned this secret, or I must beg you to let me get my sleep."
"That's easy. I heard Whit and Phinuit talking about you the other night, on deck, when they didn't think anybody was listening."
Lanyard smiled into the darkness: no need to fret about fair play toward this one! The truth was not in him, and by the same token the traditional honour that obtains among thieves could not be.
He said, as if content, in the manner of a practical man dismissing all immaterial considerations:
"As you say, the time is brief..."
"It'll have to be pulled off to-morrow night or not at all," the mutter urged with an eager accent.
"My thought, precisely. For then we come to land, do we not?"
"Yes, and it'll have to be not long after dark. We ought to drop the hook at midnight. Then"--the mutter was broken with hopeful anxiety--"then you've decided you'll stand in with me, Mr. Lanyard?"
"But of course! What else can one do? As you have so fairly pointed out: what is either of us without the other?"
"And it's understood: you're to lift the stuff, I'm to