“Now I’m just going to say the thing that’s in my mind,” he went on, his tone changing again to something clumsily persuasive.  “You can take it easy from me.  You see, you picked me up when I was down and out.  You passed me a hand when there wasn’t a hope left me but a stretch of penitentiary.  I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is mostly my way in things.  And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by accident.  Well, it don’t matter.  It was you who got me clear away when they’d got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it’s a thing I can’t never forget.  I’m out for you all the time, and I want you to know it when I’m telling you the things in my mind.  Hellbeam’s got a mighty big kick coming.  It’s the biggest kick any feller of his sort can have.  He’s the money power of Sweden.  He’s one of the big money powers of the States.  He lives for money and the power it hands him.  Well?  This is how I figger.  Just how you played him up I can’t say.  But it’s his job to juggle around with figgers same as it’s yours, and if you beat him out of ten million dollars you must have played a slicker hand than him.  All of which says you must have got more to windward of the law than him—­and he knows it.  Why, it’s easy.  The feller who has the money power to hold the crown jewels of Sweden from falling into the hands of yahoo politicians out to grab the things they haven’t the brains to come by honestly, is mostly powerful enough to buy up the justice he needs, or any other old thing.  Hellbeam means to get his hands on you.  He’s going to get you across the darn American border.  And when he’s got you there he’s going to send you down, by hook or crook, to the worst hell an American penitentiary can show you.  It’s seven years since you hurt him.  But that ain’t a circumstance.  If it takes him seventy-seven he’ll never quit your trail.”

Bat paused, and, for a moment, turned from the wide black eyes he had held seemingly fascinated while he was talking.  It almost seemed that the emotions stirring in his broad bosom were too overpowering for him, and he needed respite from their pressure.  But he came again.  He was bound to.  It was his nature to drive to the end at whatever cost to himself.

“I’m handing you this stuff, Les, because I got to,” he went on.  “It ain’t because I’m liking it.  No, sir.  And if you’ve the horse sense I reckon you have, you’ll locate my object easy.  Those words of Nisson’s have told us plain we got to fight.  We got to fight like hell.  And the time’s right now.  Oh, yes, we’re going to fight.  You an’ me, just the same as we’ve fought a heap of times before.  There ain’t a feller I know who’s got more fight in him than you—­when you feel that way.  But—­well, say, you just need a boost to make you feel like it.  You ain’t like me who wants to fight most all the time.  No.  Well—­I’m going to hand you that boost.”

“How?”

Standing’s unruffled interrogation was in sharp contrast with the other’s earnestness.  There was a calm tolerance in it.  The tolerance of a temperament given to philosophy rather than passion.  Perhaps it was a mask.  Perhaps it was real.  Whatever it was, Bat’s next words sent the hot fire of a man’s soul leaping into his eyes.