“Well, mister, I’ll start with the days when I first came across Howard Stormont, when we both were young men. No need to tell you I wasn’t a model youth. If I had been, I shouldn’t have picked up with him, or rather he with me. Upon my word of honour, Mr. Grewgus, I never had much of a chance. My mother, I know, was a good woman, she died when I was a kid, I should say of a broken heart. My father was a ne’er-do-well, drunken, callous, dishonest. Unfortunately I took after him, but never in my life have I had decent luck. If I went straight for a bit, misfortune dogged me, and on the crook I didn’t fare much better.” Proceeding with his narrative, the Colonial explained that at this period he was associated with a set of men who were not particular as to how they got their living, although they could not boast of being scientific or high-class criminals. The one thing to which they had definitely made up their minds was that they would not work, except under the direst compulsion. They preferred to beg, borrow, or, when necessary, cheat and steal. Stormont, then quite a young man, a little while before was introduced to this promising association, and in spite of his youth soon evinced qualities that marked him out for leadership. It was whispered about presently that he had got into some trouble at home and that his relatives had insisted on his going abroad. “I never knew precisely what the trouble was,” Newcombe explained, “but from all I could gather from a few things dropped by him when he had a little--for he was a heavy drinker in those days--it was about money. His people--he always used to boast that he came of a highly respectable family--paid his passage out and gave him a few pounds over. I understood he was not to go back to England till he could return with a clean bill of health. “Him and me took a great fancy to each other. I don’t quite know what he saw in me, for I was rather a dull, plodding sort of chap compared with most of the men I associated with, who told me I wasn’t quite clever enough for the game. What I admired in him was his high spirits, and first and foremost his wonderful cunning and cleverness: he was always alert and up to every move on the board. He was also very generous, spent money like water when he had it, and most popular with his mates. They thought a wonderful lot of his abilities and prophesied that he would one day become a crook of the first water.” “I take it, these associates of yours were not in the front rank of their profession?” interjected Grewgus. The Colonial shook his head. “Certainly not; with the exception of Stormont they had neither the nerves nor the brains. A great deal of card-sharping, plucking raw young pigeons who had just come out, a little bit of easy swindling here and there, that was as far as they could go. Stormont was altogether on a higher plane. He had the brain to invent and elaborate big things.”