He did not finish the sentence.  Mr. Wagg was most distinctly not encouraging that line of talk.

“Look here, Vaniman, when you got away with that money you had hardened yourself up to the point where you were thinking of your own self first, hadn’t you?”

The young man did not dare to burst out with the truth—­not while Wagg was in the mood his expression hinted at.

Wagg continued:  “Well, I’ve got myself to the point where I’m thinking of my own self.  I’m as hard as this rock I’m sitting on.”  In his emphasis on that assertion Wagg scarred his knuckles against the ledge.  “After all the work I’ve had in getting myself to that point, I’m proposing to stay there.  If you try to soften me I shall consider that you’re welching on your trade.”

Wagg made the declaration in loud tones.  After all his years of soft-shoeing and repression in a prison, the veteran guard was taking full advantage of the wide expanses of the big outdoors.

“What did I do for you, Vaniman?  I let you cash in on a play that I had planned ever since the first barrow of dirt was dumped into that pit.  There’s a lifer in that prison with rich relatives.  I reckon they would have come across with at least ten thousand dollars.  There’s a manslaughter chap who owns four big apartment houses.  But I picked you because I could sympathize with you on account of your mother and that girl the papers said so much about.  It’s a job that can’t be done over again, not even for the Apostle Peter.  Now will you even hint at welching?”

“Certainly not!”

But that affirmation did not come from Vaniman.  It was made in his behalf by a duet of voices, bass and nasal tenor, speaking loudly and confidently behind the two men who were sitting on the ledge.

The younger man leaped to his feet and whirled; the older man struggled partly upright and ground his knees on the ledge when he turned to inspect the terrifying source of sound.

So far as Vaniman’s recollection went, they were strangers.  One was short and dumpy, the other was tall and thin.  They wore slouchy, wrinkled, cheap suits.  There was no hint of threat in their faces.  On the contrary, both of the men displayed expressions of mingled triumph and mischief.  Then, as if they had a mutual understanding in the matter of procedure, they went through a sort of drill.  They stuck their right arms straight out; they crooked the arms at the elbows; they drove their hands at their hip pockets and produced, each of them, a bulldog revolver; they snapped their arms into position of quick aim.

Wagg threw up his hands and began to beg.  Vaniman held himself under better control.

But the men did not shoot.  They returned the guns to their pockets and saluted in military fashion, whacking their palms violently against their thighs in finishing salute.

“Present!” they cried.  Then the dumpy man grinned.  Wagg had been goggling, trying to resolve his wild incredulity into certainty.  That grin settled the thing for him.  It was the same sort of a suggestive grin that he had viewed on that day of days in the prison yard.