Page 640 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

these years?’
‘I don’t suppose you cared much.’
‘Don’t you? You never thought about me at all. I have
cared this much, John Rex—bah! the door is shut close
enough—that I have spent a fortune in hunting you down;
and now I have found you, I will make you suffer in your
turn.’
He laughed again, but uneasily. ‘How did you discover
me?’
With a readiness which showed that she had already
prepared an answer to the question, she unlocked a writ-
ing-case, which was on the side table, and took from it a
newspaper. ‘By one of those strange accidents which are the
ruin of men like you. Among the papers sent to the overseer
from his English friends was this one.’
She held out an illustrated journal—a Sunday organ of
sporting opinion— and pointed to a portrait engraved on
the centre page. It represented a broad-shouldered, bearded
man, dressed in the fashion affected by turfites and lovers of
horse-flesh, standing beside a pedestal on which were piled
a variety of racing cups and trophies. John Rex read under-
neath this work of art the name,
MR. RICHARD DEVINE, THE LEVIATHAN OF THE
TURF.
‘And you recognized me?’
‘The portrait was sufficiently like you to induce me to
make inquiries, and when I found that Mr. Richard Devine
had suddenly returned from a mysterious absence of four-
teen years, I set to work in earnest. I have spent a deal of