“Serpent’s tooth!” he said falteringly, “so it is you, whom I warmed at my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?”
“No; but to save him! Come into the City and look at my model. If you like it, the patent shall be yours!”
“Cab, cab, cab,” cried Dick Avenel, stopping a ‘Ransom;’ “jump in, Leonard,—jump in. I’ll buy your patent,—that is, if it be worth a straw; and as for payment—”
“Payment! Don’t talk of that!”
“Well, I won’t,” said Dick, mildly; “for ‘t is not the topic of conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that black-whiskered alligator, the baron, let me first get out of those rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his, and then—but jump in! jump in! and tell the man where to drive!”
A very brief inspection of Leonard’s invention sufficed to show Richard Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on the war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into partnership some other monster capitalist—What then? Any partner better than Levy. A bright idea struck him.
“If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own ground for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into partnership,—make the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination, and then we shall flog the world.”
His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the offer, exclaimed, “Well, then, any friend of yours; I’m all for reform against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of ‘Free and Easies’ with the independent freemen, I carry one—seat certain, perhaps both seats of the town of Lansmere, in my breeches pocket.” Dick then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his lawyer’s, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he declared “should be honourable to both parties,” hurried off, to search amongst his friends in the City for some monster capitalist, who alight be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy and the engines of his rival at Screwstown. “Mullins is the man, if I can but catch him,” said Dick. “You have heard of Mullins?—a wonderful great man; you should see his nails; he never cuts them! Three millions, at least, he has scraped together with those nails of his, sir. And in this rotten old country, a man must have nails a yard long to fight with a devil like Levy! Good-by, good-by,—Goon-by, MY DEAR, nephew!”