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 Chinaman, though."
"Ay, there's the Chink," assented Ricardo rather absentmindedly.
He was debating in his mind the advisability of making a clean breast of
his knowledge of the girl's existence. Finally he concluded he wouldn't.
The enterprise was difficult enough without complicating it with an
upset to the sensibilities of the gentleman with whom he had the honour
of being associated.
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