I'm a fellow with a price, I am.

Whoever pays my price gets his money's worth.

If you'd had the sense to pay me more than this man does, I'd have helped you trick him instead of helping him trick you; but he gave me my wages before dinner and you gave me nothing, so here you are, and I wouldn't like to be keeping your pair of trousers warm! I tell you, this Ramsden effendi is an awful fellow, who will stick at nothing, and I'm worse because I'm honest and do what I'm paid to do!" I took the precaution of putting my arm around Rene, for it was likely that he had another weapon hidden somewhere, and the obvious thing for him to do was to shoot the two of us and make a bolt for it.

For a second I thought I felt his hand moving; but it was Jeremy's, searching all his pockets and feeling for hidden steel.

So I pulled out a cigar and lit a match.
Of course, anyone's face looks ghastly by that sort of sudden light; but Rene's was a picture of hate, rage, baffled cunning and fear, such as I had never seen; his eyes looked like an animal's at bay, and the way his lips parted from his teeth conveyed the impression that he was searching his mind wildly for a desperate remedy that would ruin all concerned except himself.
But it was only a stale old recourse that he had.