“Heedlessness on my side, a crooked judge on his. Stop spying on my neighbor’s flirtations and look here.”
I turned and got a shock. The handbag lay open on the desk, surrounded by a respectable-sized fortune in bank-notes.
“Pretty much all that the Honorable Ely has left me,” he added.
“Is it enough to go on with, Ned?” I asked.
He smiled at me. “Plenty for my time. You forget.”
For the moment I had forgotten. “But what on earth are you going to do with all that ready cash?”
“Carry out a brilliant idea. I conceived it after you had handed down your verdict. Went around to the bank and quietly drew out the lot. I’ve planned a wild and original orgy. A riot of dissipation in giving. Think of the fun one can have with that much tangible money. Already to-day I’ve struck one man dumb and reduced another to mental decay, by the simple medium of a thousand-dollar bill. Miracles! Declare a vacation, Chris, and come with me on my secret and jubilant bat, and we’ll work wonders.”
“And after?” I asked.
“Oh, after! Well, there’ll be no further reason for the ‘permanent possibility of sensation’ on my part. That’s your precious science’s best definition of life, I believe. It doesn’t appeal to one as alluring when the sensation promises to become—well, increasingly unpleasant.”
There was no mistaking his meaning. “I can’t have that, my son,” I protested.