'Our landlord?' enquired Morris.
'That's the party,' said John. 'He came nosing about the place, and then wanted to know where the water-butt was, and the bedclothes. I told him to go to the devil; so would you too, when there was no possible thing to say! And then he said I had pawned them, and did I know it was felony? Then I made a pretty neat stroke. I remembered he was deaf, and talked a whole lot of rot, very politely, just so low he couldn't hear a word. "I don't hear you," says he. "I know you don't, my buck, and I don't mean you to," says I, smiling away like a haberdasher. "I'm hard of hearing,' he roars. "I'd be in a pretty hot corner if you weren't," says I, making signs as if I was explaining everything. It was tip-top as long as it lasted. "Well," he said, "I'm deaf, worse luck, but I bet the constable can hear you." And off he started one way, and I the other. They got a spirit-lamp and the Pink Un, and that old religious paper, and another periodical you sent me. I think you must have been drunk--it had a name like one of those spots that Uncle Joseph used to hold forth at, and it was all full of the most awful swipes about poetry and the use of the globes. It was the kind of thing that nobody could read out of a lunatic asylum. The Athaeneum, that was the name! Golly, what a paper!'
'Athenaeum, you mean,' said Morris.
'I don't care what you call it,' said John, 'so as I don't require to take it in! There, I feel better. Now I'm going to sit by the fire in the easy-chair; pass me the cheese, and the celery, and the bottle of port--no, a champagne glass, it holds more. And now you can pitch in; there's some of the fish left and a chop, and some fizz. Ah,' sighed the refreshed pedestrian, 'Michael was right about that port; there's old and vatted for you! Michael's a man I like; he's clever and reads books, and the Athaeneum, and all that; but he's not dreary to meet, he don't talk Athaeneum like the other parties; why, the most of them would throw a blight over a skittle alley! Talking of Michael, I ain't bored myself to put the question, because of course I knew it from the first. You've made a hash of it, eh?'
'Michael made a hash of it,' said Morris, flushing dark.
'What have we got to do with that?' enquired John.
'He has lost the body, that's what we have to do with it,' cried Morris. 'He has lost the body, and the death can't be established.'
'Hold on,' said John. 'I thought you didn't want to?'
'O, we're far past that,' said his brother. 'It's not the tontine now, it's the leather business, Johnny; it's the clothes upon our back.'
'Stow the slow music,' said John, 'and tell your story from beginning to end.' Morris did as he was bid.
'Well, now, what did I tell you?' cried the Great Vance, when the other had done. 'But I know one thing: I'm not going to be humbugged out of my property.'
'I should like to know what you mean to do,' said Morris.
'I'll tell you that,' responded John with extreme decision. 'I'm going to put my interests in the hands of the smartest lawyer in London; and whether you go to quod or not is a matter of indifference to me.'
'Why, Johnny, we're in the same boat!' expostulated Morris.
'Are we?' cried his brother. 'I bet we're not! Have I committed forgery? have I lied about Uncle Joseph? have I put idiotic advertisements in the comic papers? have I smashed other people's statues? I like your cheek, Morris Finsbury. No, I've let you run my affairs too long; now they shall go to Michael. I like Michael, anyway; and it's time I understood my situation.'
At this moment the brethren were interrupted by a ring at the bell, and Morris, going timorously to the door, received from the hands of a commissionaire a letter addressed in the hand of Michael. Its contents ran as follows:
MORRIS FINSBURY, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE at my office, in Chancery Lane, at 10 A.M. tomorrow. MICHAEL FINSBURY
So utter was Morris's subjection that he did not wait to be asked, but handed the note to John as soon as he had glanced at it himself
'That's the way to write a letter,' cried John. 'Nobody but Michael could have written that.'
And Morris did not even claim the credit of priority.
CHAPTER XVI.
Final Adjustment of the Leather Business
Finsbury brothers were ushered, at ten the next morning, into a large apartment in Michael's office; the Great Vance, somewhat restored from yesterday's exhaustion, but with one foot in a slipper; Morris, not positively damaged, but a man ten years older than he who had left Bournemouth eight days before, his face ploughed full of anxious wrinkles, his dark hair liberally grizzled at the temples.
Three persons were seated at a table to receive them: Michael in the midst, Gideon Forsyth on his right hand, on his left an ancient gentleman with spectacles and silver hair. 'By Jingo, it's Uncle Joe!' cried John.
But Morris approached his uncle with a pale countenance and glittering eyes.
'I'll tell you what you did!' he cried. 'You absconded!'
'Good morning, Morris Finsbury,' returned Joseph, with no less asperity; 'you are looking seriously ill.'
'No use making trouble now,' remarked Michael. 'Look the facts in the face. Your uncle, as you see, was not so much as shaken in the accident; a man of your humane disposition ought to be delighted.'
'Then, if that's so,' Morris broke forth, 'how about the body? You don't mean to insinuate that thing I schemed and sweated for, and colported with my own hands, was the body of a total stranger?'
'O no, we can't go as far as that,' said Michael soothingly; 'you may have met him at the club.'
Morris fell into a chair. 'I would have found it out if it had come to the house,' he complained. 'And why didn't it? why did it go to Pitman? what right had Pitman to open it?'
'If you come to that, Morris, what have you done with the colossal Hercules?' asked Michael.
'He went through it with the meat-axe,' said John. 'It's all in spillikins in the back garden.'
'Well, there's one thing,' snapped Morris; 'there's my uncle again, my fraudulent trustee. He's mine, anyway. And the tontine too. I claim the tontine; I claim it now. I believe Uncle Masterman's dead.'
'I must put a stop to this nonsense,' said Michael, 'and that for ever. You say too near the truth. In one sense your uncle is dead, and has been so long; but not in the sense of the tontine, which it is even on the cards he may yet live to win. Uncle Joseph saw him this morning; he will tell you he still lives, but his mind is in abeyance.'
'He did not know me,' said Joseph; to do him justice, not without emotion.
'So you're out again there, Morris,' said John. 'My eye! what a fool you've made of yourself!'
'And that was why you wouldn't compromise,' said Morris.
'As for the absurd position in which you and Uncle Joseph have been making yourselves an exhibition,' resumed Michael, 'it is more than time it came to an end. I have prepared a proper discharge in full, which you shall sign as a preliminary.'
'What?' cried Morris, 'and lose my seven thousand eight hundred pounds, and the leather business, and the contingent interest, and get nothing? Thank you.'
'It's like you to feel gratitude, Morris,' began Michael.
'O, I know it's no good appealing to you, you sneering devil!' cried Morris. 'But there's a stranger present, I can't think why, and I appeal to him. I was robbed of that money when I was an orphan, a mere child, at a commercial academy. Since then, I've never had a wish but to get back my own. You may hear a lot of stuff about me; and there's no doubt at times I have been ill-advised. But it's the pathos of my situation; that's what I want to show you.'