My Friend The Murderer. Артур Конан Дойл

dark. He came up to me in Ballarat in ‘75; you can see on the back of my hand here where the bullet clipped me. He tried again in ‘76, at Port Philip, but I got the drop on him and wounded him badly. He knifed me in ‘79, though, in a bar at Adelaide, and that made our account about level. He’s loafing round again now, and he’ll let daylight into me – unless – unless by some extraordinary chance some one does as much for him.” And Maloney gave a very ugly smile.

      “I don’t complain of him so much,” he continued. “Looking at it in his way, no doubt it is a sort of family matter that can hardly be neglected. It’s the government that fetches me. When I think of what I’ve done for this country, and then of what this country has done for me, it makes me fairly wild – clean drives me off my head. There’s no gratitude nor common decency left, doctor!”