He was a coward, and yet had come out to do murder.
It had taken real panic to bring him to the point.

Throughout his tattered life he had run many risks, but never a peril so instant as this.

As he had followed his quarry that afternoon his mind had been full of broken memories.

Bitter thoughts they were, for luck had not been kind to him.

A childhood in cheap lodgings in London and a dozen French towns, wherever there was a gaming-table and pigeons for his father to pluck.