Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/134

118 this feud with Chu-Chu would not have bothered me a scrap. Although I had always managed to keep on good terms with, my colleagues, such blood-quarrels had come under my observation several times, and in most cases they had reached their issue quietly and without "scandal," as one might say. Chu-Chu and I turned loose in Paris on the warpath for each other's scalps were on perfectly even terms; in fact, the advantage was, if anything, with me, as I could play a greater number of rôles than he, and, more important than that, I was not driven by sheer hate and malignity. My game would be played entirely with the head, while it was possible with Chu-Chu that emotion might lead him into taking chances.

But the trouble was that Chu-Chu belonged to the Under-World, which I had left. A man going about his business in a respectable state of Society has about as much chance of protecting himself against the preformed attack of a dangerous criminal as a stag in a deer-park would have of escaping a hunter out for its head. I knew mighty well that if I wanted to kill Chu-Chu before Chu-Chu got a chance to kill me I would have to take a dive under the surface of Society. Otherwise the odds would be those of a man swimming against a tiger-shark. So I determined to slip back into the Under-World long enough to do for Chu-Chu.

This may sound cold-blooded and ferocious to you, my friend, but you must remember that I had been a criminal for all of my life. As I have told you before, I was never one of those thugs who walk into a house with a loaded gun, ready to take life if interrupted. But I had never placed a very high