Short Stories
inside coat pocket.
A string of large pearls emerged from wrappings of tissue
paper and chamois skin. Jim scarcely glanced at them.
"They're worth money," he said, and returned to the dia-
monds.
A silence fell on the two men. Jim played with the gems,
running them through his fingers, sorting them into piles, and
spreading them out flat and wide. He was a slender, wizened
man, nervous, irritable, high-strung, and anaemic—a typical
child of the gutter, with unbeautiful twisted features, small-
eyed, with face and mouth perpetually and feverishly hungry,
brutish in a catlike way, stamped to the core with degeneracy.
Matt did not finger the diamonds. He sat with chin on
hands and elbows on table, blinking heavily at the blazing ar-
ray. He was in every way a contrast to the other. No city had
bred him. He was heavy- muscled and hairy, gorilla-like in
strength and aspect. For him there was no unseen world. His
eyes were full and wide apart, and there seemed in them a cer-
tain bold brotherliness. They inspired confidence. But a closer
inspection would have shown that his eyes were just a trifle
too full, just a shade too wide apart. He exceeded, spilled over
the limits of normality, and his features told lies about the
man beneath.
"The bunch is worth fifty thousan'," Jim remarked sudden-
ly.
"A hundred thousan'," Matt said.
The silence returned and endured a long time, to be bro-
ken again by him.
136