Explore "The Spider's Web" by St. George Rathborne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The ex-actor has reported matters in pretty much the way they occur. Samson plays his part in a manner that need never shame him, and perhaps secretly enjoys the situation. To a man engaged in his business, where he daily matches his wit and shrewdness against the diplomacy of others, the constant friction must of necessity polish these qualities. There is no danger of rust with a wide-awake operator on 'Change. This, then, really comes in line with his daily business, only now he deals with a tricky Turk instead of howling brokers, and the stake is not a fortune -- it may be his life.
It is characteristic of the man that he insists upon managing his own game and beating his old-time enemy in person. Most men, under similar conditions, would gladly turn the whole business over to the police, and put the Turk from the Golden Horn through a course of American law and justice that would prevent his reappearance in his old haunts until the holding of the next World's Fair in Russia.