"So soon as you came into this office I knew that I had been right, and that you were every inch your father's son. You are clever; don't suppose that I don't appreciate the fact. I am not so clever, which fact you have taken rather too much for granted. You have overlooked one quality I have, and that is--a nose for a thief. I owe to it a good deal of such success as I have had--in a sense, I can smell a thief so soon as he comes near me. Of course, in your case I had your father's record to help me; but I think that, without it, I should have scented you, your odour was so pungent. You had not been in the place a month before you began to play your little tricks. I do not flatter myself that I found you out in all of them, but I did in a good many. I said nothing, but I made a note of each, and have the complete record in a certain volume which will possibly be produced one day in a court of assize. Then there came the incident of the cheque--the eight pounds which you turned into eighty. When I saw that cheque I realised that immunity had given you courage, and that you were beginning to fly at higher game. I am, as I believe you and other gentlemen in the office are aware, a regular old fogey, a dray-horse sort of man. I never, if I can help it, arrive at a hasty decision. I put that cheque aside and waited; you see, although you live to the age of Methuselah, a thing like this is always up against you--you can never get away from it. I was in no hurry."
Again Mr. Patterson paused. Leaning back in his chair, he smiled. Rodney told himself that he resembled an ogre who was enjoying, in anticipation, the meal he proposed to make of him.
"After all, my lad, although you are so clever, you're a fool--indeed, your cleverness is folly. If you had to be dishonest, hadn't you sense enough to gratify your instincts on less dangerous lines? You have made a serious mistake in underrating me; perhaps that's because your experience of men is small. I've been watching you; you've been living in a fool's paradise--your conscience has never pinched you because you have never feared discovery. Yet, if you had troubled yourself to think, you must have known that, sooner or later, discovery was bound to come, and that, when it did, I had you. You were a fool, my lad, a fool."