“Would you say the same of a horse or a dog?” “By no means, old chap; but a dog or a horse is prodigiously a different thing, don't y' know. The dominant traits of either of those noble creatures are honesty, courage, loyalty--they're the home of the virtues. Now a man is another matter. He's an evil beggar, is a man; and, like a monkey, he has virtues only so far as you force him to adopt them. As Machiavelli says: 'We're born evil, and become good only by compulsion.' Now to improve a breed, as the phrase is, makes simply for the promotion of what are the dominant traits of the creature one has in hand. Thus, to refine or emphasize the horse and the dog, increases them in honesty, loyalty, and courage since such are top-traits with those animals. With a monkey or a man, and by similar argument, the more you refine him, the more abandoned he becomes. Really,” and here Morton restored himself with a cigarette, “I shouldn't want these views to find their way to my club. It would cause the greatest row ever in our set; it would, really! I am made quite ill to only think of it.” “What would you call a gentleman, then?” I asked. Morton's theories, while I in no manner subscribed to them, entertained me. “What should I call a gentleman? Why I should call him the caricature of a man, don't y' know.” The Reverend Bronson had been abroad in his campaign against those sharpers of Barclay Street for perhaps four weeks. I understood, without paying much heed to the subject, that he was seeking the evidence of their crimes, with a final purpose of having them before a court. There had been no public stir; the papers had said nothing. What steps had been taken were taken without noise. I doubted not that the investigation would, in the finish, die out. The hunted ones of Barclay Street were folk well used to the rôle of fugitive, and since Gothecore kept them informed of the enemy's strategy, I could not think they would offer the Reverend Bronson and his ally, McCue, any too much margin. As yet, I had never seen this McCue. By that, I knew him to be an honest man. Not that one is to understand how none save a rogue would come to me. I need hardly explain, however, that every policeman of dark-lantern methods was eagerly prone to make my acquaintance. It was a merest instinct of caution; the storm might break and he require a friend. Now this McCue had never sought to know me, and so I argued that his record was pure white. This did not please me; I preferred men upon whom one might have some hold. These folk of a smooth honesty go through one's fingers like water, and no more of a grip to be obtained upon one of them than upon the Hudson. I made up my mind that I would see this McCue.