erhaps," suggested Mr. Jones jocularly.

His faithful secretary suffered from irritation, and did not see the
joke. In a fretful tone he declared that there was no such thing as
conscience. There was such a thing as funk; but there was nothing to
make that fellow funky in any special way. He admitted, however, that
the man might have been uneasy at the arrival of strangers, because of
all that plunder of his put away somewhere.

Ricardo glanced here and there, as if he were afraid of being overheard
by the heavy shadows cast by the dim light all over the room. His
patron, very quiet, spoke in a calm whisper:

"And perhaps that hotel-keeper has been lying to you about him. He may
be a very poor devil indeed."

Ricardo shook his head slightly. The Schombergian theory of Heyst had
become in him a profound conviction, which he had absorbed as naturally
as a sponge takes up water. His patron's doubts were a wanton denying
of what was self-evident; but Ricardo's voice remained as before, a soft
purring with a snarling undertone.

"I am sup-prised at you, sir! It's the very way them tame ones--the
common 'yporcrits of the world--get on. When it comes to plunder
drifting under one's very nose, there's not one of them that would keep
his hands off. And I don't blame them. It's the way they do it that sets
my back up. Just look at the story of how he got rid of that pal of his!
Send a man home to croak of a cold on the chest--that's one of your tame
tricks. And d'you mean to say, sir, that a man that's up to it wouldn't
bag whatever he could lay his hands in his 'yporcritical way? What was
all that coal business? Tame citizen dodge; 'yporcrisy--nothing else.
No, no, sir! The thing is to extract it from him as neatly as possible.
That's the job; and it isn't so simple as it looks. I reckon you have
looked at it all round, sir, before you took up the notion of this
trip."

"No." Mr. Jones was hardly audible, staring far away from his couch. "I
didn't think about it much. I was bored."

"Ay, that you were--bad. I was feeling pretty desperate that afternoon,
when that bearded softy of a landlord got talking to me about this
fellow here. Quite accidentally, it was. Well, sir, here we are after a
mighty narrow squeak. I feel all limp yet; but never mind--his swag will
pay for the lot!"

"He's all alone here," remarked Mr. Jones in a hollow murmur.

"Ye-es, in a way. Yes, alone enough. Yes, you may say he is."

"There's that