"What I want? You don't want it; no, of course not? You didn't come here to get it?"
Lumley laughed.
"I certainly came here to get it. There's a considerable reward offered for its recovery, as I daresay you know. I intended to claim that reward."
Lumley looked at him in silence for a moment, and then burst out into another laugh.
"You are a cove!" he said, when his mirth would let him speak. "So that's your game, is it? Bah!"
He spat on the ground in fierce derision, and then with a sudden change of manner he came close up to Gray.
"Stow all that nonsense, lad. Tell me what Dearing said, and be quick about it. We're goin' to be fond partners, share and share alike. Come, shell out this minute!"
Gray looked up at him; then he took out his note-book and rapidly reproduced the map he had destroyed, and handed it to Clay without a word. The light was fading, and he took it to the door to examine it. Gray's eyes followed him with a savage concentrated hate in them.
It was the man's coarse scorn of himself that was hardest to bear—harder even than the knowledge that he had lost the money he had sacrificed so much to gain. Gray had been accustomed to the admiration of his fellow-men. He had been liked and respected wherever he had been. It was horrible to him to be the object of this convict's coarse taunts and sneers. He, who had so prided himself on his clean name and unblemished record, had fallen low indeed. And he could not feel that the taunts were undeserved. Slowly and grudgingly, just for a moment, the curtain that hid his true self was lifted for Gray, and with a shudder he confessed that Lumley did him no wrong in claiming partnership with him.
His gloomy thoughts were broken into by a chuckle from Clay.