"I said nothing about legitimate trade," said the Frenchman quietly, as he rolled himself another cigarette.
The eyes of the two men met, and they understood each other.
The mate had never let drop so broad a hint before; but he knew that he was safe in doing so. There had existed for some time a sort of freemasonry of crime between himself and Carew. They had been thrown altogether upon each other's society of late. Both were educated men, and gentlemen by birth; both were shrewd readers of character; and it is so far easier for the bad than for the good man to recognise a kindred nature.
Carew did not exactly entertain a liking for his mate, but he found his companionship far pleasanter than that of any other man could have been. The Frenchman's tolerant way of looking at crime was peculiarly gratifying to the ex-solicitor. It acted as a most soothing salve to his conscience.
He liked to hear the man's cynical talk—the superficial philosophy with which he defended crime as being the least hypocritical way of obeying nature's law of the struggle for existence. The very presence of this villain seemed to exert a strange, magnetic influence on Carew's pliable soul, lulling it into a fool's paradise.
Such an affinity for evil between two men who are much together will soon destroy any conscience that either of them may happen to possess.
So Carew, having become accustomed to an atmosphere of crime, no longer shrank from the thought of it, and, with an amused smile, replied to the mate's remark, "What piece of villainy are you going to suggest now, Baptiste?"
"I don't think you ought to use that word villainy," protested the Frenchman, with an air of comic indignation. "As a matter of fact, I was not at that moment thinking of any one particular 'piece of villainy,' but vaguely of a great number of feasible schemes I know of for transferring the wickedly-earned riches of others into our own deserving pockets."
"This is highly interesting," said Carew, in a bantering tone. "Explain one of these notable schemes of yours, Baptiste."
But the Frenchman did not reply. He looked round the horizon with a puzzled expression, and, putting his hand to his ear, appeared to be listening intently.