“Ah, that is another matter. We could not have foreseen how he was to turn out. We supposed him to be a gentleman of reputation--of character.” “Innocent-minded Bernstein! Ingenuous Tom Moore! After dinner Moore returned with me to my rooms.” “You invited me.” “I did--that’s true; and you came. I said to him, ‘I hear you’re a bit of a penman.’” “I didn’t know what you meant.” “You wouldn’t. I laid five bill-stamps in front of him.” “There was nothing on them.” “True again; there wasn’t. I showed him my brother’s signature at the bottom of a letter, and I asked him if he thought that he could make a nice clean copy of it in the corner of each stamp.” “You never said what you were going to do with it.” “Still correct--I didn’t. But you said, ‘How much are you going to give me?’” “Well, you were a stranger to me; you didn’t expect I was going to do you a favour for nothing?” “Hardly. I said I’d give you a hundred pounds, which I thought was pretty fair pay for a little copying. But you said, ‘I want five hundred.’” “You didn’t give me five hundred pounds, not you! You know you didn’t! Or anything like!” “Accurate as ever. I couldn’t see my way to quite as much as that. I said you should have two hundred.” “That night you never gave me any money at all.” “No. But in the morning I carried to Mr. Isaac Bernstein five bills for a thousand pounds apiece, with, on each, my brother’s endorsement in the corner. In exchange, Mr. Bernstein presented me with two thousand five hundred pounds, and out of that you had two hundred.” “I took it as a friendly present.” “Precisely--from a perfect stranger. Time went on. The three months slipped by. I began to fidget. Luck was most consummately against me. Two thousand five hundred pounds went no way at all; I had lost it, pretty nearly every penny, before I really realised that I had ever had it. When it was gone, I knew that breakers were ahead; a pretty nasty lot of rocks. As I say, I began to fidget. I knew my brother, and was well aware that, since last time it had been nearly murder, this time it would come as near as possible to quite. Philip’s temper, my friends, Philip’s temper was distinctly bad. We had had a few fights together, he and I, and out of them it had not been my general custom to come out best. Now I foresaw that the biggest fight of all our fights was drawing comfortably close; and when I asked myself in what condition I should probably emerge from it, I was not able to supply my question with an answer which gave me entire satisfaction. “I began to hate my brother. As the days stole by, I began to hate him more and more--to fear him. The two things together, the hatred and the fear, took such a hold of me that I began to cast about in my mind how I could get the best of him, when the game was blown upon and the fight began. And at last I thought of something which I had chanced upon in India.