‘My schemes!’ sneered Ravengar.  ’You might at least tell the madman what his schemes are.’

Hugo laughed.

’You must have been maturing the day’s business quite a long time, my boyhood’s companion, my floater of public companies, my pearl of financiers.  Yes, decidedly parts of it were wonderfully ingenious.  To sow the place with pickpockets, to get at my cashiers, my commissionaires, and my servers.  To substitute your own false shopwalkers for the genuine article.  To arrange for the arrest of important customers on preposterous charges of theft.  To lock up a hundred women in a gallery till they nearly died.  To have my best and most advertised bargains removed in the night.  To deprive the restaurants of food, and to employ women to turn them upside down.  To produce, as you contrived to do, a general air of pandemonium, and to ruin the discipline of over three thousand of the best-trained employes in England.  All this, and much else which I do not mention, was devilish clever in its conception, and the execution of it commands my unqualified admiration.  Especially having regard to the fact that you contrived not to arouse my suspicions.  I may tell you that certain strange incidents which occurred in my establishment during the autumn did indeed lead me vaguely to suspect that you were at work against me, but you were sufficiently smart to put me off the track again.  Let me add that until this afternoon I did not perceive that your purchase of a controlling share in the Evening Herald was only a portion of a mightier plan.’

‘Really, Owen—­’

’Don’t waste your breath in denials.  You will have none at all presently, like Bentley.’

‘Bentley?’ repeated Ravengar, with a slight movement.

’Yes; but we will come to Bentley in a few minutes.  I have enlarged to you on your own cleverness.  I must enlarge to you on your folly.  What folly!  What was the end of all this to be, Ravengar?  I have tried to put myself in your place, and to follow your thoughts.  You hate me.  You think I robbed you of a fortune, and that I helped to rob you of a woman.  You wished to buy my business, and add it to the roll of your companies.  And I deprived you of that triumph.  Your hatred of me grew and grew.  Leading a solitary and narrow life, you allowed it to develop into a species of monomania.  I had come out on top once too often for your peace of mind.  In your opinion the world was too small to hold both of us.  Accordingly, you evolved your terrific campaign.  My business was to be seriously damaged.  And I was to be murdered.  And then you were to get the concern cheap from my executors, and to float me dead since you could not float me living.  What folly, Ravengar!  What stupendous folly!  Even if the fanciful and grotesque scheme had succeeded as far as my death, it could not have succeeded beyond that point.’

’I don’t know what you are chattering about, Owen, but you look as if you expected me to ask, “Why?” Anything to oblige you.  Why?’