He didn't make reply at once, but looked out of the grimy, cobwebby pane at the sky.

The face of London Bill was rough, but not unpleasant, and, though he had killed his man and was a desperate individual if cornered, the only trait expressed was a patient capacity for enterprises that might require days or even weeks in their carrying out.
"Don't you think now you're a bit of a come-on ?" observed London Bill, swinging around to Storri from his survey of the distant heavens.
"Why ?" asked Storri, as cool as the other.
"This is why," returned London Bill.

"Here you butt in, a dead stranger, and make a proposition.

Suppose I was to rap ?" "I'd declare that you lied," replied Storri cheerfully, "and no one with sense would believe you.

They would say that if I intended to ask your help in such work as I have described, I wouldn't seek an introduction through a detective agency." "Something in that," said London Bill, a gleam of admiration in his beady gimlet eye.