Richard did not conceal that he was impressed by the fine simplicity and effectiveness of Raphael’s scheme.
‘But,’ the old man continued, ‘I made money faster than I could get rid of it. It gradually accumulated. Then it was that I invented my Mexican uncle, so that I might deal with the coin more openly.’
‘Yes?’ said Richard.
‘That is all,’ said Raphael Craig.
‘But the object of the scheme?’ asked Richard. ‘You said you needed all this money for a certain scheme.’
‘Yes,’ said the old man solemnly, ‘and the scheme is approaching fruition. Yet a little time, and my task will be done.’
‘It is well,’ Richard put in, ‘that your scheme is nearly completed, for the methods you have employed might even now be found out, and then good-bye to the scheme, whatever it is.’
Raphael Craig smiled.
‘No, my friend,’ he remarked composedly, ‘nothing can upset it now. The last of my silver is disposed of—safely negotiated. Go into my sheds now, and you will discover—nothing. My machinery is destroyed; all evidence is annihilated. For twenty years I have been crossing an abyss by means of a tight-rope; at any moment I might have been precipitated into the gulf. But at last I am on firm ground once more. It is the Other, now, who will shortly be plunged into the abyss.’
‘The Other!’ Richard repeated, struck by the strange and mordant accent with which Raphael Craig had pronounced that word.