"All right, then. Here's the situation, Doc. We're broke. If Quint
hadn't staked us to this here new game we're playin', where'd we be, I
ask you?
"We got no income now. Quint's is shut up; Maxy Venem and Minna Minti
fixed us at Saratoga so we can't go back there for a while. They won't
let us touch a card on the liners. Every pug is leery of us since
Eddie flimflammed that Battling Smoke; and I told you he'd holler,
too! Didn't I?" turning on Brandes, who merely let his slow eyes rest
on him without replying.
"Go on, Ben," said Curfoot.
"I'm going on. We guys gotta do something----"
"We ought to have fixed Max Venem," said Curfoot coolly.
There was a silence; all three men glanced stealthily at Neeland, who
quietly turned the page of his book as though absorbed in his story.
"That squealer, Max," continued Curfoot with placid ferocity blazing
in his eyes, "ought to have been put away. Quint and Parson wanted us
to have it done. Was it any stunt to get that dirty little shyster in
some roadhouse last May?"
Brandes said: "I'm not mixing with any gunmen after the Rosenthal business."
"Becuz a lot of squealers done a amateur job like that, does it say
that a honest job can't be pulled?" demanded Curfoot. "Did Quint and
me ask you to go to Dopey or Clabber or Pete the Wop, or any of them
cheap gangsters?"
"Ah, can the gun-stuff," said Brandes. "I'm not for it. It's punk."
"What's punk?"
"Gun-play."
"Didn't you pull a pop on Maxy Venem the night him and Hyman Adams and
Minna beat you up in front of the Knickerbocker?"
"Eddie was stalling," interrupted Stull, as Brandes' face turned a
dull beef-red. "You talk like a bad actor, Doc. There's other ways of
getting Max in wrong. Guns ain't what they was once. Gun-play is old
stuff. But listen, now. Quint has staked us and we gotta make good.
And this is a big thing, though it looks like it was out of our
line."
"Go on; what's the idea?" inquired Curfoot, interested.
Brandes, the dull red still staining his heavy face, watched the
flying landscape from the open window.
Stull leaned forward; Curfoot bent his lean, narrow head nearer;
Neeland, staring fixedly at his open book, pricked up his ears.
"Now," said Stull in a low voice, "I'll tell you guys all Eddie and I
know about this here business of Captain Quint's. It's like this,
Doc: Some big feller comes to Quint after they close him up--he won't
tell who--and puts up this here proposition: Quint is to open a
elegant place in Paris on the Q. T. In fact, it's ready now. There'll
be all the backing Quint needs. He's to send over three men he can
trust--three men who can shoot at a pinch! He picks us three and
stakes us. Get me?"