Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/104

80 too fond of beef! It was a meat which, in my hungriest days, I never loved. When you had lunched, I slipped my arm through yours"

"You slipped your arm through mine!"

"But indeed I did, and at the same moment I slipped my cards into the pocket of your overcoat. For I liked you, although for your beef I had a constitutional disrelish."

I had a constitutional disrelish for the style of conversation which he appeared to favour. As I listened to him talking in that cold-blooded way, of what, to say the least of it, were absolute impossibilities, I began to be conscious of a fit of shivering, as though I had plunged, unawares, into a bath of ice-cold water.

"You—you don't expect me to believe these fairy tales?"

"I went with you to the station; then, when the train was starting, I thought it time I should appear. So I appeared. I resolved that you should win, say, sixty pounds, and then—I would expose you."

"Expose me! Good heavens! man or demon—why?"

"Because I hoped to find in you a worthy successor to my fame."

I stared at him aghast. What could he mean?

"Do you—do you mean that you hoped to find in me the making of a thief?"

"Such words are hard. I hoped to find in you an artist, my dear sir."

"You consummate scoundrel! Man or demon, I shall be very much tempted, in half a minute, to throw you through the carriage window."