second-best animal rug on earth—is there no murder behind the woof and warp of it? What? Talk sense, Cleigh, talk sense! You cable me: Get such and such. I get it. What the devil do you care how it was got, so long as it eventually becomes yours? It’s a case of the devil biting his own tail—pot calling kettle black.”

“How much do you want?” 123

123

“No, Cleigh, it’s the romantic idea.”

“I will give you fifty thousand for the rug.”

“I’m sorry. No use now of telling you the plot; you wouldn’t believe me, as the song goes. Dinner at seven. Will you dine in the salon with me, or will you dine in the solemn grandeur of your own cabin, in company with Da Vinci, Teniers, and that Carlo Dolci the Italian Government has been hunting high and low for?”

“I will risk the salon.”

“To keep an eye on me as long as possible. That’s fair enough. You heard what I said to those boys. Well, every mother’s son of ’em will toe the mark. There will be no change at all in the routine. Simply we lay a new course that will carry us outside and round Formosa, down to the South Sea and across to the Catwick. I’ll give you one clear idea. A million and immunity would not stir me, Cleigh.”

“What’s the game—if it’s beyond ransom?”

Cunningham laughed boyishly.

“It’s big, and you’ll laugh, too, when I tell you.”

“On which side of the mouth?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Is it the rug?”

“Oh, that, of course! I warned you that I’d come for the rug. It took two years out of my young life to get that for you, and it has always 124 haunted me. I just told you about passions, didn’t I? Once on your back, they ride you like the devil—down-hill.”

124

“A crook.”

 Prev. P 72/167 next