He had returned from Ostend only
a day or two previously, and had endeavoured with all his might to
forget the affair which had carried him there - to regard it, in fact,
as done with. But he found himself unable to do so. In vain he
remarked, under his breath, that there were some things which
were best left alone: if his experience as a manipulator of markets,
a contriver of gigantic schemes in New York, had taught him
anything at all, it should surely have taught him that. Yet he could
not feel reconciled to such a position. The mere presence of the
princes in his hotel roused the fighting instincts of this man, who
had never in his whole career been beaten. He had, as it were,
taken up arms on their side, and if the princes of Posen would not
continue their own battle, nevertheless he, Theodore Racksole,
wanted to continue it for them. To a certain extent, of course, the
battle had been won, for Prince Eugen had been rescued from an
extremely difficult and dangerous position, and the enemy -
consisting of Jules, Rocco, Miss Spencer, and perhaps others - had
been put to flight. But that, he conceived, was not enough; it was
very far from being enough. That the criminals, for criminals they
decidedly were, should still be at large, he regarded as an absurd
anomaly. And there was another point: he had said nothing to the
police of all that had occurred. He disdained the police, but he
could scarcely fail to perceive that if the police should by accident
gain a clue to the real state of the case he might be placed rather
awkwardly, for the simple reason that in the eyes of the law it
amounted to a misdemeanour to conceal as much as he had
concealed.
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