“You scored it up against me, all right,” Jacob acknowledged. “Those fellows might easily have got away with my hundred thousand pounds. I’m not at all sure that I ought not to settle an annuity on you.”
“Nothing doing,” was the prompt reply. “Believe me, Jacob, old dear, mine is one of those peculiar intelligences which thrive best in a state of penury. Give me an absolutely assured income and my talents would rust. I should no longer be equal to measuring my wits against the Morses of the world.”
Jacob smiled.
“I think you gave that young man the surprise of his life.”
“I’m not at all sure that I didn’t play it a trifle low down on Mr. Sydney Morse,” Felixstowe reflected. “He was a very credulous simpleton, for all his cunning. The stage setting of his scheme was wonderful and the details perfect, but he lacked the insight of a great crook. On the whole I am glad that your brother let the bunch off lightly.”
“Samuel is almost fatally good-natured,” his brother remarked. “I have never known him to stay angry for long with any one.”
“But what a prince! What a pasha!” Felixstowe declared enthusiastically. “He decked me out at Tiffany’s till I feel like a walking jeweller’s shop in the evening. And what a send-off! The old country’s going to seem a bit flat, Jacob. I feel as though I were coming back to the rustic life.”
“It’s something to have any sort of life to come back to,” Jacob sighed.
The young man glanced at his companion with thoughtful eyes.
“Got the pip, old bean?” he enquired, with gentle sympathy.