“I thank you, and I premise that this little expedition is of my sole conception and at my own cost, and that the associates of whom you spoke know nothing of it.”
“I see. You would have stolen a march on them?”
“Precisely; and, if possible, secure for myself alone the booty that all desire to share.”
“You are candour itself.”
“I read in it my better policy. Believe me, necessity is my foster-mother and her vile children are my comrades. Once I was blameless, though a schoolmaster. The birch-rod was my business, the fishing-rod my recreation, a passion for Elzivirs my ruin. I stole to allay it—a crime as white as the theft of bread to a starving man. The law took cognizance, grudging me all but my dry bones of syntax. I have suffered, but I am no more vicious now than then. I desire no gauds or vanities, but means only to the satisfying of this scholarly craving for books.”
“To gorge on which you would pilfer a stone worth £70,000? You see I play out my hand squarely, making no pretence of misreading your motives.”
The tall rascal smiled.
“As to that,” he said, “I must do honour to your profound penetration. Yes, sir, the ‘Lake of Wine’ is what I am after; and, for the rest, a passion is none that halts on the hither side of satiety. You could understand spending a thousand, or fifty thousand pounds on horses; but horses die, sir, or breed-in and degenerate, whereas written words beget great thoughts that in their turn intermarry and beget greater.”
“Well, Mr. Brander—and do you propose that I give you this stone to buy books with?”
“I propose to come to terms with you on the subject.”