It would be waste of time to write the reasons urged by Howel to induce his mother to advance him this money; but after some hours of entreaty, and a promise from him that he would repay it shortly, she consented to write the necessary cheque for that sum. She insisted upon the business being managed through Mr Rice Rice, her attorney at home, and wrote to him to empower him to raise it as he best could for her son at once.
As she was a poor scribe, and a still worse orthographer, Howel superintended the letter, and when it was written said he would enclose and post it. He was most particular in telling her where and how to write the figures; and before the ink was dry begged her to go to a davenport, which stood at the other end of the room, for a stamp.
No sooner was her back turned towards him, than with the same pen and ink he made the straight figure one into a four, and in the cheque which she had written, as well as in the accompanying letter, four thousand six hundred pounds held the place that one thousand six hundred had held when Mrs Griffith Jenkins left the table to go to the davenport.
If Howel trembled, or if his conscience smote him when he did this dreadful deed, he did not let his mother see it.
'Perhaps, after all, you had better direct the letter, mother,' he said, as he finished sealing it. 'If I do it it will look as if I thought you couldn't write, and you really write just as well as any other lady of your age. I am really very much obliged to you.'
When Howel carried the letter out of the room, and went for a few moments into another, he said to himself, 'I can pay the whole back after the races, and manage so as to prevent her knowing anything about it. And if the worst come to the worst, I must tell her what I did. She won't expose me; it will be a furious quarrel, and then all will be over. We must keep her here for a long time, and I must get hold of her letters first and read them to her, and alter them if necessary. Now I must look about for another thousand pounds.'
In due course of time the money was procured for Mrs Jenkins, and paid into a London bank. Howel took possession of the letter of advice concerning it, and told his mother he had opened it because she was out when it arrived, and he had not a moment to lose in obtaining the money from the bank. He kissed her, and talked to her, and hurried her and Netta to dress for a drive in the park with him, until he made her forget to obtain possession of the letter, and so far his fraud prospered.
A few mornings after he had received the money, he had a note from Mr Deep, containing the intelligence of the return from abroad of Sir Samuel Spendall, and that his attorneys were investigating his affairs. As soon as he received this note, he went by a succession of omnibuses to the east of London, and, as it chanced, into his brother-in-law's parish. In this parish there was a wretched-looking suburb, inhabited principally by Jews, whose houses were, unlike the whited sepulchres metaphorically used in scripture to describe the hearts of their race, most unclean without, but magnificent within. Into many of these dwellings Howel went in the hope of raising money, but without success. His credit was at zero.
In a desolate, but somewhat more respectable-looking house of the same parish, he hired a couple of rooms, giving his name as Mr Mills, and paying a week's rent in advance.
He was walking up this street, looking for a cab, when he was suddenly accosted by his brother-in-law, Rowland Prothero.