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"For I'm going to make the most wonderful telescope the world has ever known!" "This is travelin' in style, all right," approvingly remarked Captain Britten, looking about the comfortably appointed cabin and sniffing the appetizing odor of lamb chops on the electric grill. When necessary, Ned Newton could cook an impromptu meal. He really was rather proud of his ability.
Am I the man the police are looking for, or is it another?" I answered him straight out. "The pair of you are in it. You know that well enough and the reward is five hundred, to say nothing of what the police are offering." "You mean to have that reward, Britten." "If I can get it fairly, yes." "As good as to say you'll walk straight out of here and give me up?"
It was curious how we two had picked up our ancient intimacy again and resumed the easy give and take of our speculative dreaming schoolboy days. For a time my life centred altogether upon this journalistic work. Britten was an experienced journalist, and I had most of the necessary instincts for the business.
Edward evidently thought him aggressive and impertinent, and Margaret with a quiet firmness that brooked no resistance, took him at once into a corner and showed him Italian photographs by Coburn. We dispersed early. I walked with Britten along the Chelsea back streets towards Battersea Bridge he lodged on the south side. "Mrs. Millingham's a dear," he began. "She's a dear."
Do you think they lie awake of nights searching their hearts as we do? Lewis? Crampton? Or those neat, admiring, satisfied little wives? See how they shrank from the probe!" "We all," I said, "shrink from the probe." "God help us!" said Britten.... "We are but vermin at the best, Remington," he broke out, "and the greatest saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from the dust.
Dressed in a lot of fluffy stuff, with a pink satin skirt, and arms bare to the shoulders and a chain of diamonds about her neck dressed like this, and so sweet and gracious in her manner, talking to me just as though she had known me from infancy, and asking me, Lal Britten, to help her why, you bet I said "Yes," and said it so plainly that even she could not mistake me.
He had just breakfasted off his usual brandy-and-soda and dry toast when I came in; and the big cigar did sentry-go across his mouth all the time he talked to me. "Come in, come in, Britten," he cried pompously, when I appeared. "You like your place, I hope you don't find the work too hard?" "That's so sir a very nice sort of place this for a delicate young man like myself."
Truly, Hamburg, thou art a painstaking, industrious, money-making city, with more available wealth among thy pitch and slime than other towns can boast of in their trimness and finery, but spendthrift, and debauched, and dissolute withal art thou! Punch, du edler trank der Britten! Punch, thou noble drink of Britons—
Now Madame had been nearly asleep upon my shoulder when this happened, but she woke up at the report and looked up all about her as though she had been dreaming. "Where are we, Britten?" she asked. "What has happened to us?" "Tyre gone, madame. I must trouble you to get down." She woke up at this, and got out immediately.
The attempts to rehabilitate Faith in the form of the Individualist's LAISSEZ FAIRE never won upon me. I disliked Herbert Spencer all my life until I read his autobiography, and then I laughed a little and loved him. I remember as early as the City Merchants' days how Britten and I scoffed at that pompous question-begging word "Evolution," having, so to speak, found it out.
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