ow we've paid our way straight. We've always been
pretty straight anyway, even if we are a pair of vagabonds, and I don't
half like this new business; but it had to be done. If I hadn't taken
down that sharper you'd have lost confidence in me and wouldn't have
been able to mask your feelings, and I'd have had to stoush you. We're
two hard-working, innocent bushies, down for an innocent spree, and we
run against a cold-blooded professional sharper, a paltry sneak and
a coward, who's got neither the brains nor the pluck to work in the
station of life he togs himself for. He tries to do us out of our
hard-earned little hundred and fifty--no matter whether we had it or
not--and I'm obliged to take him down. Serve him right for a crawler.
You haven't the least idea what I'm driving at, Smith, and that's the
best of it. I've driven a nail of my life home, and no pincers ever made
will get it out."

"Why, Steely, what's the matter with you?"

Steelman rose, took up the pile of ten sovereigns, and placed it neatly
on top of the rest.

"Put the stuff away, Smith."

After breakfast next morning, Gentleman Sharper hung round a bit, and
then suggested a stroll. But Steelman thought the weather looked
too bad, so they went on the balcony for a smoke. They talked of the
weather, wrecks, and things, Steelman leaning with his elbows on the
balcony rail, and Sharper sociably and confidently in the same position
close beside him. But the professional was evidently growing uneasy in
his mind; his side of the conversation grew awkward and disjointed,
and he made the blunder of drifting into an embarrassing silence before
coming to the point. He took one elbow from the rail, and said, with a
bungling attempt at carelessness which was made more transparent by the
awkward pause before it:

"Ah, well, I must see to my correspondence. By the way, when could you
make it convenient to let me have that hundred? The shares are starting
up the last rise now, and we've got no time to lose if we want to double
it."

Steelman turned his face to him and winked once--a very hard, tight,
cold wink--a wink in which there was no humour: such a wink as Steelman
had once winked at a half-drunken bully who was going to have a lark
with Smith.

The sharper was one of those men who pull themselves together in a bad
cause, as they stagger from the blow. But he wanted to think this time.

Later on he approached Steelman quietly and proposed partnership.