the
dead.

"Serves me right for taking a room in such a cheap hole," reflected Jim
in the darkness. "I wonder whom she's let the room to!"

The two rooms, the landlady had told him, were originally one. She had
put up a thin partition--just a row of boards--to increase her income.
The doors were adjacent, and only separated by the massive upright beam
between them. When one was opened or shut the other rattled.

With utter indifference to the comfort of the other sleepers in the
house, the two Germans had meanwhile commenced to talk both at once and
at the top of their voices. They talked emphatically, even angrily. The
words "Father" and "Otto" were freely used. Shorthouse understood
German, but as he stood listening for the first minute or two, an
eavesdropper in spite of himself, it was difficult to make head or tail
of the talk, for neither would give way to the other, and the jumble of
guttural sounds and unfinished sentences was wholly unintelligible.
Then, very suddenly, both voices dropped together; and, after a moment's
pause, the deep tones of one of them, who seemed to be the "father,"
said, with the utmost distinctness--

"You mean, Otto, that you refuse to get it?"

There was a sound of someone shuffling in the chair before the answer
came. "I mean that I don't know how to get it. It is so much, father. It
is _too_ much. A part of it--"

"A part of it!" cried the other, with an angry oath, "a part of it, when
ruin and disgrace are already in the house, is worse than useless. If
you can get half you can get all, you wretched fool. Half-measures only
damn all concerned."

"You told me last time--" began the other firmly, but was not allowed to
finish. A succession of horrible oaths drowned his sentence, and the
father went on, in a voice vibrating with anger--

"You know she will give you anything. You have only been married a few
months. If you ask and give a plausible reason you can get all we want
and more. You can ask it temporarily. All will be paid back. It will
re-establish the firm, and she will never know what was done with it.
With that amount, Otto, you know I can recoup all these terrible losses,
and in less than a year all will be repaid. But without it. . . . You must
get it, Otto. Hear me, you must. Am I to be arrested for the misuse of
trust moneys? Is our honoured name to be cursed and spat on?" The old
man choked and stammered in his anger and desperation.

Shorthouse stood shiver