‘So!—Through the window again!—like a thief!—Is it always through that door that you come into a house?’
He paused,—as if to give me time to digest his gibe.
‘You saw Paul Lessingham,—well?—the great Paul Lessingham!—Was he, then, so great?’
His rasping voice, with its queer foreign twang, reminded me, in some uncomfortable way, of a rusty saw,—the things he said, and the manner in which he said them, were alike intended to add to my discomfort. It was solely because the feat was barely possible that he only partially succeeded.
‘Like a thief you went into his house,—did I not tell you that you would? Like a thief he found you,—were you not ashamed? Since, like a thief he found you, how comes it that you have escaped,—by what robber’s artifice have you saved yourself from gaol?’
His manner changed,—so that, all at once, he seemed to snarl at me.
‘Is he great?—well!—is he great,—Paul Lessingham? You are small, but he is smaller,—your great Paul Lessingham!—Was there ever a man so less than nothing?’
With the recollection fresh upon me of Mr Lessingham as I had so lately seen him I could not but feel that there might be a modicum of truth in what, with such an intensity of bitterness, the speaker suggested. The picture which, in my mental gallery, I had hung in the place of honour, seemed, to say the least, to have become a trifle smudged.
As usual, the man in the bed seemed to experience not the slightest difficulty in deciphering what was passing through my mind.
‘That is so,—you and he, you are a pair,—the great Paul Lessingham is as great a thief as you,—and greater!—for, at least, than you he has more courage.’