Read "The Crimson Cryptogram" by Fergus Hume online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Poverty, naked and unconcealed! One can endure that, with some patience, as a beaten soldier in the battle of life. But genteel pauperism -- the semi-poverty of the middle-class, that lives a necessary lie at the cost of incessant worry and constant defeat -- there you have the true misery of life. Believe me, Cass, there is no torture like that of an ambition which cannot be attained for lack of money."
"I did not know you were ambitious, Ellis."