"
"Oh, no, sir."
"Well," said Sam, "you can't say it's not a temptation. And you know
what you Napoleons of the Underworld are!"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1
If there is one thing more than another which weighs upon the mind of a
story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to
describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient
with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting
himself to what are after all minor developments. This story, for
instance, opened with Mrs. Horace Hignett, the world-famous writer on
Theosophy, going over to America to begin a lecture-tour; and no one
realises more keenly than I do that I have left Mrs. Hignett flat. I
have thrust that great thinker into the background and concentrated my
attention on the affairs of one who is both her mental and moral
inferior, Samuel Marlowe. I seem at this point to see the reader--a
great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram
of a battleship, the sort of fellow who is full of determination and will
stand no nonsense--rising to remark that he doesn't care what happened
to Samuel Marlowe and that what he wants to know is, how Mrs.
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