“Confess? Merely that bank robbery?”
“Merely? Yes, but why ‘merely’?”
The Colonel said in his most impressive manner: “Hawkins, he will be wholly under my command. I will make him confess every crime he ever committed. There must be a thousand. Do you get the idea?”
“Well—not quite.”
“The rewards will come to us.”
“Prodigious conception! I never saw such a head for seeing with a lightning glance all the outlying ramifications and possibilities of a central idea.”
“It is nothing; it comes natural to me. When his time is out in one jail he goes to the next and the next, and we shall have nothing to do but collect the rewards as he goes along. It is a perfectly steady income as long as we live, Hawkins. And much better than other kinds of investments, because he is indestructible.”
“It looks—it really does look the way you say; it does indeed.”
“Look?—why it is. It will not be denied that I have had a pretty wide and comprehensive financial experience, and I do not hesitate to say that I consider this one of the most valuable properties I have ever controlled.”
“Do you really think so?”