“Mr. Onslow, I’ll make it a thousand. There!”
“Mr. Theodore Shelf, when a monkey wants a cat to pull chestnuts for him out of the fire, he first has to be stronger than the cat. You don’t occupy that enviable position. In fact, I have the whip-hand of you in every way. We need not particularize, but you can sum the items for yourself. Now I’ll make you an offer. Half of all the plunder, and entire control of everything.”
“Great heavens! do you want to ruin me?”
“I don’t care in the least if I do. Your welfare doesn’t interest me. But my services are on the market with a prix fixé, and you can take ’em or leave ’em. That’s final.”
Shelf burst into a torrent of expostulations; exciting himself more and more as he went on; till at last he stood before the other with gripped fists and the veins ridged out down his neck, inarticulate with fury.
Onslow heard him out with a contemptuous smile, but when the man had stormed himself into silence, then he spoke, coolly and coldly:
“When one trades in life and death, the brokerage is heavy. You have heard my offer. If you don’t like it, say so without further palaver, and I’ll leave you now—with your conscience, if you have a rag of such a commodity left.”
“You may sit where you are,” replied Shelf sullenly.
“Well and good. That means to say my terms are accepted. I’ll pin you to them later. But for the present let me observe to you something else, so that there may be no misunderstanding between us. I’ve been rambling up and down the world half my life, and I’ve met blackguards of most descriptions in every iniquitous place, from Callao to Port Saïd—forgers, thieves, murderers of nearly every grade of proficiency. But they say that the prime of everything gets to London, and I verily believe now that it does, for by Jove, you are the most pernicious scoundrel of all the collection!”
“Sir!” thundered Shelf, “am I to listen to these foul insults in my own house?”