even while I felt the hopelessness of trying to argue with him.
"What's in that club-bag there will do me a considerable time," he announced. His flippancy hurt me even more than his sullenness. It felt like the flick of a whip-lash in the face. It startled me into a sort of desperation.
"Bud, if you give me that automatic I'll go with you, wherever you want," I told him, as I stepped closer to his side.
But as I advanced he backed slowly away.
"Not on your life!" he said with grim deliberation.
"You mean you don't want me?" I cried.
"I mean I don't fall for any trick like that!"
"Then you don't trust me?" I demanded. "You're through with me? You don't even want me to go with you?"
He shook his head.
"You couldn't come if you wanted to," he said with a derisive bark of a laugh.
"Why couldn't I?"
"This guy here wouldn't let you," he explained, with a pistol-wave in the direction of Wendy Washburn.
