“Saul Morris, I believe?” he said, and “Joshua Broad” nodded.
Elk pursed his lips thoughtfully, and his eyes went back to the still figure at his feet.
“Now, Frog, let me see you,” he said, and tore away the mask.
He looked down into the face of Philosopher Johnson!
CHAPTER XLII
JOSHUA BROAD EXPLAINS
THE sunlight was pouring through the windows of Maytree Cottage; the breakfast things still stood upon the table, when the American began his story.
“My name, as you rightly surmised, Mr. Elk, is Saul Morris. I am, by all moral standards, a criminal, though I have not been guilty of any criminal practice for the past ten years. I was born at Hertford in Connecticut.
“I am not going to offer you an apology, conventional or unconventional, for my ultimate choice; nor will I insult your intelligence by inviting sympathy for my first fall. I guess I was born with light fingers and a desire for money that I had not earned. I was not corrupted, I was not tempted, I had no evil companions; in fact, the beginnings of my career were singularly unlike any of the careers of criminals which I have ever read.
“I studied bank robberies as a doctor might take up the study of anatomy. I understand perfectly every system of banking—and there are only two, one of which succeeds, the other produces a plentiful crop of fraudulent directors—and I have added to this a knowledge of lockcraft. A burglar who starts business without understanding the difficulties and obstacles he has to overcome is—to use the parallel I have already employed—like the doctor who starts off to operate without knowing what arteries, tissues and nerves he will be severing. The difference between a surgeon and a butcher is that one doesn’t know the name of the tissues he is cutting!