Jack snorted. "I could see what excellent friends you were when you came here to parley with me on the evening of July the 28th. The suspicion on old Ike’s face was quite obvious. Oh, not suspicion of you only but of everyone . I knew then that a few words from me would set him off. And so now you are enemies. Which is of as much significance to me, as that flies are, at this moment, swarming on camels’ arses in Cairo. Your old friend, enemy, or whatever he is, wishes to tear me limb from limb. Now. This bloke, who would do this terrible thing to me, is, it seems, a sorcerer or alchemist of some stripe, straight out of a bleeding færy-tale! Just like elves and trolls, his sort are fading away, and soon to vanish from this world. A state of affairs that is as plain to them, as it is to you and me! But where you and I look on this as a dying-off—and good riddance!—Ike and his chums mistake it for an Apocalypse that will be their great and final triumph. Ones such as he used to come and pester us in Vagabond-camps, and we would sport with them, lacking other diversions. Just as the proprietor of a gin-house uses his customers’ lust for booze to get money to feed his family, why, I am using Ike’s lust for the Solomonic Gold to get what I require for myself and the boys. Which I’ll go on doing until I have achieved satisfaction. If the result is a raid upon the Whig Mint hidden at Clerkenwell Court, and if in consequence you and your learned associates are brought hither in chains, it is nothing to me."