You know that--you know that, Isaac.

I tell you I couldn't do it this afternoon--I tell you I couldn't.

I tried to and--and I couldn't." Jimmie Dale was lying flat on the little landing now, peering into the room.

Back a short distance from the doorway, a repulsive-looking little man in unkempt clothes and soiled linen, with yellowish-skinned, parchment face, out of which small black eyes shone cunningly and shrewdly, sat at a bare deal table in a rickety chair; facing him across the table stood a young man of not more than twenty-five, clean cut, well dressed, but whose face was unnaturally white now, and whose hand, as he extended it in a pleading gesture toward the other, trembled visibly.

Jimmie Dale's hand made its way quietly to his side pocket and extracted his automatic.
Old Isaac humped his shoulders, and leered at his visitor.
"We talk a great deal, my young friend.