And besides, since his interview with Michael, the idea wore a less attractive countenance.

Was Michael the man to be blackmailed?
and was Morris the man to do it?
Grave considerations.

'It's not that I'm afraid of him,' Morris so far condescended to reassure himself; 'but I must be very certain of my ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way.

How unlike is life to novels! I wouldn't have even begun this business in a novel, but what I'd have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who'd have become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably broken into Michael's house at night and found nothing but a waxwork image; and then blackmailed or murdered me.

But here, in real life, I might walk the streets till I dropped dead, and none of the criminal classes would look near me.