“A fellow like that couldn't fix it that way, however much he wanted to,” Tembarom answered again reasonably. “Just his trying to do it would give him away.”
“You mean you have gathered things?”
“Oh, I've gathered enough, though I didn't go after it. It hung on the bushes. Anyhow, it seemed to me that way. I guess you run up against that kind everywhere. There's stacks of them in New York—different shapes and sizes.”
“If you met a man of his particular shape and size in New York, how would you describe him?” the duke asked.
“I should never have met him when I was there. He wouldn't have come my way. He'd have been on Wall Street, doing high-class bucket-shop business, or he'd have had a swell office selling copper-mines—any old kind of mine that's going to make ten million a minute, the sort of deal he's in now. If he'd been the kind I might have run up against,” he added with deliberation, “he wouldn't have been as well dressed or as well spoken. He'd have been either flashy or down at heel. You'd have called him a crook.”
The duke seemed pleased with his tea as, after having sipped it, he put it down on the table at his side.
“A crook?” he repeated. “I wonder if that word is altogether American?”
“It's not complimentary, but you asked me,” said Tembarom. “But I don't believe you asked me because you thought I wasn't on to him.”
“Frankly speaking, no,” answered the duke. “Does he talk to you about the mammoth mines and the rubber forests?”
“Say, that's where he wins out with me,” Tembarom replied admiringly. “He gets in such fine work that I switch him on to it whenever I want cheering up. It makes me sorter forget things that worry me just to see a man act the part right up to the top notch the way he does it. The very way his clothes fit, the style he's got his hair brushed, and that swell, careless lounge of his, are half of the make-up. You see, most of us couldn't mistake him for anything else but just what he looks like—a gentleman visiting round among his friends and a million miles from wanting to butt in with business. The thing that first got me interested was watching how he slid in the sort of guff he wanted you to get worked up about and think over. Why, if I'd been what I look like to him, he'd have had my pile long ago, and he wouldn't be loafing round here any more.”