'Honesty is not a policy, my boy: it is a misfortune.'
'Why do you wish to share your loot with me?'
'Seventy or eighty thousand ounces of gold is not easily accounted for nor easily disposed of by a guest of the Queen who is on leave without a ticket that will bear the closest investigation. You could dispose of it safely enough.'
'And if I were asked to account for it?'
'That is provided for. I have discovered a field within a day's journey that nobody else knows of—that nobody else is likely to know of. You and I go there, we work it for a few months, and the gold I have mentioned is to be represented as the result of our labours if it becomes necessary to make explanations. A few thousand ounces in nuggets which might 'by some unhappy chance be recognised by previous owners we shall batter into slugs and reserve for sale in other lands.'
And then?'
'Then all that life in London and Paris means to men with great fortunes.' Ryder was smiling as he spoke. 'Then to seize and enjoy all that smug respectability is willing to give to the wealthy, and much that it is unwilling to give, but which it shall be our pleasure to take. Then to exact our revenge for all we have endured at the hands of society by making it in some measure the slave to minister to our needs and our desires. I positively tremble, my brother, when I think of the little mischief one man can work; but with money and ingenuity, combined with devotion to purpose, we may succeed in accomplishing quite a decent vengeance.'
'I have no desire for revenge upon society.'
'To be sure, you have not sat through the long black night in, a cold cell with the rats, a wet rag thrown over your lacerated back, the chains eating into your flesh like the nibbling of tiny teeth, thinking of the good people who rule England, sitting at their blazing fires or smiling round the laden tables.'
'No, thank God!'