#TheMalteseFalcon90
“....“You’re not serious,” she said. “You don’t expect me
to think that these things you’re saying are sufficient reason for sending me
to the—”
“Wait till I’m through and then you can talk. Fourth, no
matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let
you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I’ve
no reason in God’s world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got
away with it you’d have something on me that you could use whenever you
happened to want to. That’s five of them. The sixth would be that, since I’ve
also got something on you, I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t decide to shoot a
hole in me some day. Seventh, I don’t even like the idea of thinking that there
might be one chance in a hundred that you’d played me for a sucker. And
eighth—but that’s enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are
unimportant. I won’t argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on
the other side we’ve got what? All we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me
and maybe I love you.”...”
“....“You’re not serious,” she said. “You don’t expect me to think that these things you’re saying are sufficient reason for sending me to the—”
