. imagination . . . gave me quite a turn. Raffles tell you
priceless treasure I got in there?"
It was the picture at last; up to this point I had kept him to
Queensland and the making of his pile. I tried to get him back
there now, but in vain. He was reminded of his great ill-gotten
possession. I said that Raffles had just mentioned it, and that
set him off. With the confidential garrulity of a man who has
dined too well, he plunged into his darling topic, and I looked
past him at the clock. It was only a quarter to ten.
In common decency I could not go yet. So there I sat (we were
still at port) and learnt what had originally fired my host's
ambition to possess what he was pleased to call a "real, genuine,
twin-screw, double-funnelled, copper-bottomed Old Master"; it was
to "go one better" than some rival legislator of pictorial
proclivities. But even an epitome of his monologue would be so
much weariness; suffice it that it ended inevitably in the
invitation I had dreaded all the evening.
"But you must see it. Next room. This way."
"Isn't it packed up?" I inquired hastily.
"Lock and key. That's all."
"Pray don't trouble," I urged.
"Trouble be hanged!" said he. "Come along."
And all at once I saw that to resist him further would be to heap
suspicion upon myself against the moment of impending discovery.
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