Barlow mistook Larry's silence for wavering, or the beginning of an inclination to yield.
"You turn that over in your noodle," Barlow drove on.

"You're going to go crooked, anyhow, so you might as well go crooked in the only way that's safe for you.

I'm going to have Gavegan and Casey watch you, and if in the next few days you don't begin to string along with Barney and Old Jimmie and that bunch, and if you don't get me word that your answer to my proposition is 'yes,' hell's going to fall on you! Now get out of here!" Larry got out.

He was liquid lava of rage inside; but he had had enough to do with police power to know that it would help him not at all to permit an eruption against a police official while he was in the very heart of the police stronghold.
He walked back toward his own street in a fury, beneath which was subconsciously an element of uneasiness: an uneasiness which would have been instantly roused to caution had he known that Barney Palmer had this hour and more been following him in a taxicab, and that across the street from the car's window Barney's sharp face had watched him enter Police Headquarters and had watched him emerge.
Home reached, Larry briefly recounted his experience at Headquarters to Hunt and the Duchess.

The painter whistled; the Duchess blinked and said nothing at all.
"Maggie was more right than she knew when she first said you were facing a tough proposition!" exclaimed Hunt.