“It doesn’t strike me that people will be any more eager to lend you money——”
“Lend me money? I don’t want them to do that.”
“Then how——”
“I shall take it. If they accept me, they must take the consequences.”
“Do you mean that you will do it in the old way?”
“Sure. What other way do I know?”
“What if you should get caught at it, Jimmy?”
“Caught at it? Ledger Dinwiddie caught at burglary? At thievery? What an absurd idea! Oh, no, I won’t get caught at it. Not at all. And the world will open itself wide, inviting me to take it. I’ll have a winter home for you, in Washington; I’ll get those fools to send me to Congress, and—— You’ll see!”
Such was the beginning of the “Great Coup” undertaken by James Duryea, alias Bare-Faced Jimmy, the gentleman crook, alias Howard Drummond, one-time gentleman, graduate of Rugby and Cambridge, ex-officer in the dragoons, and ex- a lot of other things which had come to him by inheritance.