"
"Dangerous, is he?"
Schomberg came to himself at the sound of Ricardo's voice.
"Well, you know what I mean," he said uneasily. "A lying, circumventing,
soft-spoken, polite, stuck-up rascal. Nothing open about him."
Mr Ricardo had slipped off the table, and was prowling about the room in
an oblique, noiseless manner. He flashed a grin at Schomberg in passing,
and a snarling:
"Ah! H'm!"
"Well, what more dangerous do you want?" argued Schomberg. "He's in no
way a fighting man, I believe," he added negligently.
"And you say he has been living alone there?"
"Like the man in the moon," answered Schomberg readily. "There's no
one that cares a rap what becomes of him. He has been lying low, you
understand, after bagging all that plunder.
"Plunder, eh? Why didn't he go home with it?" inquired Ricardo.
The henchman of plain Mr. Jones was beginning to think that this was
something worth looking into. And he was pursuing truth in the manner
of men of sounder morality and purer intentions than his own; that is he
pursued it in the light of his own experience and prejudices. For facts,
whatever their origin (and God only knows where they come from), can be
only tested by our own particular suspicions. Ricardo was suspicious all
round. Schomberg, such is the tonic of recovered self-esteem, Schomberg
retorted fearlessly:
"Go home? Why don't you go home? To hear your talk, you must have made
a pretty considerable pile going round winning people's money.
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