for a few moments. In the half light, a new sternness seemed to have stolen into his face. “Richard,” he said, “you’ve seen men come out of a fight covered with scars,—wounds that burn and remind them of their sufferings. Well, I’m rather like that. I was never a very important person, you know, but in the old days I was proud of my little business and my good name. It hurt me like hell to go under. It was bad enough when people were kind. Sometimes they weren’t.” “I know,” Dauncey murmured sympathetically. “My scars are there,” Jacob went on. “If I had such a thing, Dick, I should say that they had burned their way into my soul. I haven’t made any plans. Don’t think that I am going to embark upon any senseless scheme of revenge—but if this promise of great wealth is fulfilled, I have some sort of a fancy for using it as a scourge to cruelty, or for giving the unfortunate a leg up where it’s deserved. There are [Pg 34]one or two enterprises already shaping themselves in my mind, which might be brought to a successful conclusion.” [Pg 34] “Enterprises?” Dauncey repeated a little vaguely. Jacob laid his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. There was a strange light in his eyes. “Dick,” he said, “you’d think I was a commonplace sort of fellow enough, wouldn’t you? So I am, in a way, and yet I’ve got something stirring in my blood of the fever which sent Sam out to the far west of America, more for the sheer love of going than for any hope of making a fortune. I’ve lived an everyday sort of life, but I’ve had my dreams.” “We’re not going around the world treasure hunting, or anything of that sort, are we?” Dauncey asked anxiously. “All the treasure hunting we shall do,” Jacob replied, with a little thrill in his tone, “will be on the London pavements. All the adventures which the wildest buccaneers the world has ever known might crave are to be found under the fogs of this wonderful city. We shan’t need to travel far in the body, Dick. A little office somewhere in the West End, a little ground bait which I know about, and the sharks of the world will come stealing around us. There are seven or eight million people in London, Dick. A detective I once knew—kind of thoughtful chap [Pg 35]he was—once told me that on a moderate computation there were twenty-five thousand of them who would commit murder without hesitation if they
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