The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vultures, by Henry Seton Merriman

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Title: The Vultures

Author: Henry Seton Merriman

Release Date: April 13, 2006 [EBook #3805]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Dagny; John Bickers

THE VULTURES

A NOVEL

By Henry Seton Merriman

I

ALL AT SEA

Mr. Joseph P. Mangles, at his ease in a deck-chair on the broad
Atlantic, was smoking a most excellent cigar. Mr. Mangles was a tall,
thin man, who carried his head in the manner curtly known at a girls'
school as "poking." He was a clean-shaven man, with bony forehead,
sunken cheeks, and an underhung mouth. His attitude towards the world
was one of patient disgust. He had the air of pushing his way, chin
first, doggedly through life. The weather had been bad, and was now
moderating. But Mr. Mangles had not suffered from sea-sickness. He was
a dry, hard person, who had suffered from nothing but chronic
dyspepsia--had suffered from it for fifty years or so.

"Fine weather," he said. "Women will be coming on deck--hang the fine
weather."

And his voice was deep and low like a growl.

"Joseph," said Miss Mangles, "growls over his meals like a dog."

The remark about the weather and the women was addressed to a man who
leaned against the rail. Indeed, there was no one else near--and the
man made no reply. He was twenty-five or thirty years younger than Mr.
Mangles, and looked like an Englishman, but not aggressively so. The
large majority of Britons are offensively British. Germans are no
better; so it must be racial, this offensiveness. A Frenchman is at
his worst, only comically French--a matter of a smile; but Teutonic
characteristics are conducive to hostility.

The man who leaned against the rail near to Joseph P. Mangles was six
feet high, and rather heavily built, but, like many big men, he seemed
to take up no more than his due share of room in this crowded world.
There was nothing distinctive about his dress. His demeanor was quiet.
When he spoke he was habitually asked to repeat his remark, which he
did, with patience, in the same soft, inaudible voice.

T