Colonel Clay on his side was all sweet reasonableness. "Now, my dear sir," he expostulated, one hand held palm outward, "_Do_ you think it probable I would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, with so little compunction? No, no, Sir Charles Vandrift; I know too well how much you are worth to me. I return you on my income-tax paper as five thousand a year, clear profit of my profession. Suppose you were to die! I might be compelled to find some new and far less lucrative source of plunder. Your heirs, executors, or assignees might not suit my purpose. The fact of it is, sir, your temperament and mine are exactly adapted one to the other. _I_ understand _you_; and _you_ do not understand _me_--which is often the basis of the firmest friendships. I can catch you just where you are trying to catch other people. Your very smartness assists me; for I admit you _are_ smart. As a regular financier, I allow, I couldn't hold a candle to you. But in my humbler walk of life I know just how to utilise you. I lead you on, where you think you are going to gain some advantage over others; and by dexterously playing upon your love of a good bargain, your innate desire to best somebody else--I succeed in besting you. There, sir, you have the philosophy of our mutual relations." He bowed and raised his cap. Charles looked at him and cowered. Yes, genius as he is, he positively cowered. "And do you mean to say," he burst out, "you intend to go on so bleeding me?" The Colonel smiled a bland smile. "Sir Charles Vandrift," he answered, "I called you just now the goose that lays the golden eggs. You may have thought the metaphor a rude one. But you _are_ a goose, you know, in certain relations. Smartest man on the Stock Exchange, I readily admit; easiest fool to bamboozle in the open country that ever I met with. You fail in one thing--the perspicacity of simplicity. For that reason, among others, I have chosen to fasten upon you. Regard me, my dear sir, as a microbe of millionaires, a parasite upon capitalists. You know the old rhyme: Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And these again have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum! Well, that's just how I view myself. _You_ are a capitalist and a millionaire. In _your_ large way you prey upon society. YOU deal in Corners, Options, Concessions, Syndicates. You drain the world dry of its blood and its money. You possess, like the mosquito, a beautiful instrument of suction--Founders' Shares--with which you absorb the surplus wealth of the community. In _my_ smaller way, again, _I_ relieve you in turn of a portion of the plunder. I am a Robin Hood of my age; and, looking upon _you_ as an exceptionally bad form of millionaire--as well as an exceptionally easy form of pigeon for a man of my type and talents to pluck--I have, so to speak, taken up my abode upon you." Charles looked at him and groaned.