This other party had once played me a very mean trick.

I owed him a grudge, I felt awfully savage at the time, and I vowed that, when I got a chance, I would, figuratively speaking, put his nose out of joint.

There was a matter of some sixty thousand dollars at stake.

If I put it out of his way, it was a blow the fellow would feel, and he really deserved no quarter.

I jumped into a hack and went about my business, and it was in this hack--this immortal, historical hack--that the curious thing I speak of occurred.