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184 nose and chin, the sensitive, humorous mouth. The man lying back in the chair watching the blue smoke curling up from his cigar might have been a great lawyer or an eminent divine; some well-known statesman, perhaps, or a Napoleon of finance. There was power in every line of his figure, in every movement of his hands. He might have reached to the top of any profession he had cared to follow…. Just as he had reached to the top in his present one…. Some kink in the brain, some little cog wrong in the wonderful mechanism, and a great man had become a great criminal. Hugh looked at the bath: the liquid was almost clear.

"You know my feelings on the subject," remarked Lakington, taking a red velvet box out of a drawer in the desk. He opened it lovingly, and Hugh saw the flash of diamonds. Lakington let the stones run through his hands, glittering with a thousand flames, while Peterson watched him contemptuously.

"Baubles," he said scornfully. "Pretty baubles. What will you get for them?"

"Ten, perhaps fifteen thousand," returned the other. "But it's not the money I care about; it's the delight in having them, and the skill required to get them."

Peterson shrugged his shoulders.

"Skill which would give you hundreds of thousands if you turned it into proper channels."

Lakington replaced the stones, and threw the end of his cigarette into the grate.

"Possibly, Carl, quite possibly. But it boils down to this, my friend, that you like the big canvas with