The feelings with which he had now for
some months watched his master grubbing were curiously mingled. There was
the grim sense of superiority every successful detective feels as he sees
the watched one working away unconscious of the eye that is on him; but
this was more than balanced by a long habit of obsequious reverence. When
A. has been looking up to B. for thirty years, he cannot look down on him
all of a sudden, merely because he catches him falsifying accounts. Why,
Man is a cooking animal: bankrupt Man especially.
And then Richard Hardie overpowered Skinner's senses: he was Dignity in
person: he was six feet two, and always wore a black surtout buttoned
high, and a hat with a brim a little broader than his neighbours', yet
not broad enough to be eccentric or slang. He moved down the street
touching his hat--while other hats were lifted high to him--a walking
volume of cash. And when he took off this ebon crown and sat in the bank
parlour, he gained in appearance more than he lost; for then his whole
head was seen, long, calm, majestic: that senatorial front and furrowed
face overawed all comers.
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