'
The gloom of nightfall had come upon us, and I could no longer see his face
distinctly, but his voice told me that he still savoured that triumph. He
spoke with exultant passion. I was beginning to understand Ireton.
'Isn't the story interesting?' he asked, after a pause.
'Very. Pray go on.'
'Well, you mustn't suppose that it was a mere bit of crazy bravado. I knew
how I was going to get the money--the forty guineas. And as soon as I could
command myself, I went to do the business.
'A fellow-clerk in the drug warehouse had been badly in want of money not
long before that, and I knew he had borrowed twenty pounds from a loan
office, paying it back week by week, with heavy interest, out of his screw,
poor devil. I could do the same. I went straight off to the lender. It was
a fellow called Crowther; he lived in Dean Street, Soho; in a window on the
ground floor there was a card with "Sums from One pound to a Hundred lent
at short notice." I was lucky enough to find him at home; we did our
business in a little back room, where there was a desk and a couple of
chairs, and nothing else but dirt. I expected to find an oldish man, but he
seemed about my own age, and on the whole I didn't dislike the look of
him,--a rather handsome young fellow, fairly well dressed, with a taking
sort of smile.
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