"It would be nearly as safe to rook him as if he were the Man in the
moon. You go and try. It isn't so very far."
He reflected. These men were thieves and murderers as well as gamblers.
Their fitness for purposes of vengeance was appallingly complete. But he
preferred not to think of it in detail. He put it to himself summarily
that he would be paying Heyst out and would, at the same time, relieve
himself of these men's oppression. He had only to let loose his natural
gift for talking scandalously about his fellow creatures. And in this
case his great practice in it was assisted by hate, which, like love,
has an eloquence of its own. With the utmost ease he portrayed for
Ricardo, now seriously attentive, a Heyst fattened by years of private
and public rapines, the murderer of Morrison, the swindler of many
shareholders, a wonderful mixture of craft and impudence, of deep
purposes and simple wiles, of mystery and futility. In this exercise of
his natural function Schomberg revived, the colour coming back to his
face, loquacious, florid, eager, his manliness set off by the military
bearing.
"That's the exact story. He was seen hanging about this part of the
world for years, spying into everybody's business: but I am the only
one who has seen through him from the first--contemptible, double-faced,
stick-at-nothing, dangerous fellow.
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