“Is it?” said T. Tembarom. “Well,” he added slowly, “I guess Americans are pretty good business men.”
Palliser thought that this was evolving upon perfectly natural lines, as he had anticipated it would. The fellow was flattered and pleased.
“No American takes hold of a scheme of this sort until he knows jolly well what he’s going to get out of it. You were shrewd enough,” he added significantly, “about Hutchinson’s affair. You ‘got in on the ground floor’ there. That was New York forethought, by Jove!”
Tembarom shuffled a little in his chair, and grinned a faint, pleased grin.
“I’m a man of the world, my boy--the business world,” Palliser commented, hoping that he concealed his extreme satisfaction. “I know New York, though I haven’t lived there. I’m only hoping to. Your air of ingenuous ignorance is the cleverest thing about you,” which agreeable implication of the fact that he had been privately observant and impressed ought to have fetched the bounder if any thing would.
T. Tembarom’s grin was no longer faint, but spread itself. Palliser’s first impression was that he had “fetched” him. But when he answered, though the very crudeness of his words seemed merely the result of his betrayal into utter tactlessness by soothed vanity, there was something--a shade of something--not entirely satisfactory in his face and nasal twang.
“Well, I guess,” he said, “New York _did_ teach a fellow not to buy a gold brick off every con man that came along.”
Palliser was guilty of a mere ghost of a start. Was there something in it, or was he only the gross, blundering fool he had trusted to his being? He stared at him a moment, and saw that there _was_ something under the words and behind his professedly flattered grin--something which must be treated with a high hand.
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed haughtily. “I don’t like your tone. Do you take _me_ for what you call a ’con man’?”
“Good Lord, no!” answered Tembarom; and he looked straight at Palliser and spoke slowly. “You’re a gentleman, and you’re paying me a visit. You could no more try on a game to do me in my own house than--well, than I could _tell_ you if I’d got on to you if I saw you doing it. You’re a gentleman.”
Palliser glared back into his infuriatingly candid eyes. He was a far cry from being a dullard himself; he was sharp enough to “catch on” to the revelation that the situation was not what he had thought it, the type was more complex than he had dreamed. The chap had been playing a part; he had absolutely been “jollying him along,” after the New York fashion. He became pale with humiliated rage, though he knew his only defense was to control himself and profess not to see through the trick. Until he could use his big lever, he added to himself.