Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very
hard, but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.

"Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the
devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you."

"You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a
Bedouin in his rage.

"I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?"

"I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the
hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.

"Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out, we'll
come to the revelations of the Beast." There was a silence, in which the
gross impostor shifted heavily in his seat, while a hand twitched across
the mouth, and then caught at the breast of the threadbare black coat
abstractedly.

Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers.
He spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided savage
--as he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time, when searching for the
truth regarding some crime:

"I've had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always
do. And though there are folks who say I'm no lawyer, as there are those
who say with greater truth that you're no doctor, speaking technically,
we've both had 'revelations.' You've seen a lot that's seamy, and so
have I. You're pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you're as bad a man as