But he told Brant. There was nothing else he could do. It was either that, or loss of face.
'What do you think' he said gruffly. 'I've had a gun for years. Brought it back from the States; only it's not a thing I talk about. The police don't stand for that kind of thing.'
'A gun,' Brant said, making it sound tremendously important. 'So you've got a gun?'
'Had it for years,' George repeated, uneasy, yet pleased with the impression he had made. 'It saves a lot of talking. I'm not much of a one to talk. I don't need to talk with a gun.'
'I didn't know,' Brant said, and his hardness and confidence somehow didn't seem to matter any more to George.
'I don't mess around with razors,' George went on, his voice sounding strange even to him. 'That's small- time stuff.'
'You can't get guns here,' Brant said mildly, almost apologetically. 'But we scared the rat, didn't we?'
'We scared him all right,' George returned, losing his ill- temper now that Brant was acknowledging his share in Robinson's defeat. 'I'll never forget his face when you produced that sticker,' he went on, feeling a generosity that compelled him to give the lion's share of the exploit to Brant.
'Pity you didn't bring the gun,' Brant said, equally generous. 'He'd've had a heart attack.'
George sniggered. Brant, he decided, wasn't such a had sort after all. 'I'll fix him if he tries anything funny,' he went on grandly. 'What with my gun and your sticker, we've got him where we want him.'
'You're a pretty good shot, I Suppose?' Brant said, his head down and his yellow hair plastered flat by the rain.
'Me?' George laughed, delighted with Brant's interest. 'I was considered to be fair enough. I could split a playing- card edge on at twenty-five yards. Bit out of practice now, of course.'
'That's good, isn't it?' Brant said, hunching his shoulders. 'I bet you've bumped off a few guys in your day.'
George opened his mouth, saw the trap just in time, and walked on without speaking. It would he stimulating to brag that he had been a killer, but not to Brant. It was safe enough to tell Ella. She wouldn't talk, but Brant might.
'What's it like, killing a guy?' Brant asked, after a moment's pause.
'That's something I don't talk about,' George returned, shortly.
Brant glanced at him. 'Kelly killed a lot of men, didn't he?'
That was safer ground. 'A good few,' George said, shrugging his big shoulders carelessly. 'It was us or them in those days.'
'But you didn't, eh?'
Again George resisted the temptation. 'That's something I keep to myself,' he said, and after a moment's hesitation, he added gruffly, 'Lay off, will you?'
'That's all right,' Brant said quickly. 'I guess that's something no one would talk about.'
'Now you're smart,' George returned, surprised at his own audacity.
At the street corner they paused..
'Well, you better take your money,' Brant said. There was a note of reluctance in his voice, but he held out the crumpled roll of notes willingly enough.
George hesitated; at the back of his mind, although he was loath to admit it, he knew he would not have had the nerve to have taken the money. He knew that Brant expected him to share it with him, and after a mental tussle, he took the notes, hurriedly counted ten from the roll, and offered them to Brant.
'Here,' he said, his face hot with embarrassment, 'we'll share on this. After all, you helped get them.'
'Fair enough,' Brant said, and took the notes, putting them in his pocket.
George was rather taken aback by this cool acceptance of what was rightly his.
'Well, I'll he getting off,' Brant said, before George could recover. 'I don't think we'll have any further trouble with Robinson. We'll work the territory and send the orders direct to the Company. If Robinson starts trouble—well, we'll introduce him to your gun.'
George nodded. 'That's the idea,' he said eagerly. 'I'll put the wind up him all right.'
Before Brant went, he put his hand on George's arm and actually smiled at him. 'You're all right, George,' he said, pinching George's massive muscles. 'You're going to go places.'
It took George some time before he could settle to sleep that night. Even the regular, soothing sound of Leo's purring failed to lull him. He felt that Brant no longer regarded him with contempt. He felt somehow that he had impressed Brant—a difficult, almost impossible person to impress. It was risky, of course, to have told Brant about the gun, but he just could not have let him get away with his home-made sticker.
George spent a long time reconstructing the scene with Robinson, only this time it was he who played the leading part. It was he who intimidated Robinson and made him hand over the money, and it was Brant who stood speechless, his grey-blue eyes alight with admiration.
The next evening George met Brant in a pub opposite Wembley underground station. It was quite startling how Brant's attitude towards George had changed. He now seemed to regard George as the leader, and although he still had the same cold, bored expression in his eyes, and the thin hardness about his mouth, he was diffident, almost ingratiating, in his manner To George's relief, the gun was not mentioned.
'We'd better get to work,' George remarked, after calling for a second pint. 'Have another lemonade while I explain things to you.'
