Manchurian Books

We put in, put down three thousand pounds, and forthwith
the life insurance transaction and the Pollack side of this finance
vanished into thin air, leaving Pollack, I regret to say, in the brig
and in the secret--except so far as canadium and the filament went--as
residuum. We discussed earnestly whether we should charter a steamer or
go on with the brig, but we decided on the brig as a less conspicuous
instrument for an enterprise that was after all, to put it plainly,
stealing.
But that was one of our last enterprises before our great crisis, and I
will tell of it in its place.
So it was quap came into our affairs, came in as a fairy-tale and became
real. More and more real it grew until at last it was real, until at
last I saw with my eyes the heaps my imagination had seen for so long,
and felt between my fingers again that half-gritty, half soft texture
of quap, like sanded moist-sugar mixed with clay in which there stirs
something--
One must feel it to understand.
V
All sorts of things came to the Hardingham and offered themselves to my
uncle.


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