Zerkow was a Polish Jew--curiously enough his hair was fiery red.

He was a dry, shrivelled old man of sixty odd.

He had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris; and claw-like, prehensile fingers--the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses.

It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed--inordinate, insatiable greed--was the dominant passion of the man.

He was the Man with the Rake, groping hourly in the muck-heap of the city for gold, for gold, for gold.