554
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Don't urge me."
"If
you have scruples, you could make it right later when you
get to be a millionaire."
"Don't urge me, I tell you."
The conversation was taking a dangerous turn. Martin felt the
necessity of starting out again at once on their errand. Taking a rest,
he thought,
is
really taking time out to measure your trouble and
your weariness, and you begin to get ideas. But when a man is in
the shafts, he thinks of nothing but the job. All at once, the question
which he had promised himself he would not ask until the expedition
was over came to his lips and escaped them.
"Say, just between us, how much did you get a while ago, in
the cellar?"
"I didn't come out of that so badly, eh? I put five bank notes
in my pocket without rupturing myself."
"The way you got them is something else.
If
it had been just
you and Jamblier, it would be nobody's business but yours. But I
was there, and I'm the one that brought you."
The ram did not reply. Fearing that he might take offense at
a possible interpretation of these words, Martin was careful to say:
"Don't think that I'm claiming my share of it. On the con–
trary.... "
He had hoped that Grandgil would offer him a share, not that
he would have been in the least disposed to accept it, but that such
a
gestu~e
was inseparable from the near-honorable motives which
a moment ago he had been ,attributing to the fellow's blackmailing.
Grandgil had not a single word to redeem himself and to formulate,
if only with his lips, an offer that would now have been a pure
matter of form. Martin was humiliated by this, and felt that he had
been made a fool of a second time. He would have liked to see the
ram's face at this moment, and the thought of the half-smile of
irony that it was probably wearing exasperated him.
" I said, on the contrary," he repeated, in a restrained tone that
nevertheless held a threat. "In my work, I stick strictly to honest
dealing. Let's go."
Crossing the Seine by the Marie Bridge, Martin grew uneasy.
The wind, while more biting, was decidedly less violent. The clouds,
which a while ago had been invisible, were now edged with silver.
