all, if you observe, requiring time. Whether to gloat or to sneer or to think it over, all of these older races want a little time before killing. And that is exactly what your Anglo-Saxon hates. He is apt to kill right off the bat or let t go. A word, a blow, bang—and there you are.
The difference is that Europeans and Orientals, while they like the killing well enough, dislike the violence. They shrink from the rough word, the crudeness of the caveman. They want art, and for that reason a sudden outburst on the part of the Westerner always comes to the Easterner with a sort of shock of surprise. In that atmosphere of luxury and refinement I could feel it myself. Sitting there in Ivan's handsome library and looking at his fine old vellum and Louis XVI chairs and Bokhara rugs it seemed like a hideously rough and impolite play on my part to walk into the next room and stick up those two cultured and refined gentlemen, the one titled and the other decorated. But I made up my mind to do it, just the same; yes, and to turn that Empire-furnished bureau de travail into an Arizona bar-room shambles at the first shady move, adding the maître d'hôtel to the bull-pit and any other loose jokers that saw fit to bulge in. It really was simple enough. I can shoot quick and straight and I had nothing much to fear from the result. When it came to a show down my friend the prefect would be only too glad that I d taken the job off his hands. Chu-Chu's working name was known all over France, and his performances hadn't added a whole lot of lustre to the records of the Police Department. Besides, European thugs have a way of following up
