He said the last words with an odd emphasis, giving me a little shake.
“Is that the beginning of the story?” I asked, with reserve.
“O, the story!” he said. “H’m! ha! Dear take my fuddled caput! Well, here goes:
“There were once two old twin brothers, booksellers, name of Pilbrow, who kept shop together in a town, as it might be Ipswich. Now books, young gentleman, should engender an atmosphere of reason and sympathy, inasmuch as we talk of the Republic of letters, which signifies a sort of a family tie between A, B, and C. But these fellows, though twins, were so far from being united that they were always quarrelling. If Joshua bought a book of a stranger, Abel would say he had given more than its worth, and sell it at his own valuation; and if Abel attended a sale, there was Joshua to bid against him. Naturally, under these conditions, the business didn’t flourish. The brothers got poorer and poorer, and the more they lost the worse they snapped and snarled, till they took to threatening one another in public with dear knows what reprisals. Well, one day, at an auction, after bidding each against t’other thremenjus for a packet of old manuscripts and book rubbish—which Abel ended by getting, by-the-by—they fastened together like tom-cats, and had to be separated. The people laughed and applauded; but the end was more serious than was expected. Abel disappeared from the business, and a few days later the shop took fire, and was burned to the ground.
“So far, so plain; and now, Mr. Dickycumbob, d’ye know what’s meant by Insurance?”
“No, sir?”
“Well, look here. If I want to provide against my house, and the goods in it, being lost to me by fire, I go to a gentleman, with a gold watch-chain like a little ship’s cable to recommend him, and says I:—‘If I give you so much pocket-money a year, will you undertake to build up my house again for me in case it happens to be burned down?’ And the gentleman smiles, and says ‘Certainly.’ Then I say, ‘If I double your pocket-money will you undertake to give me a thousand pounds for the value of the goods in that house supposing they are burned too?’ And the gentleman says, ‘Certainly; in case their value really is a thousand pounds at the time.’ So I go away, and presently, strange to say, my house is actually burned to the ground. Then I ask the gentleman to fulfil his promise; but he says, ‘Not at all. The house I will rebuild as before, and for the goods I will pay you; but not a thousand pounds, because I am given to believe that they were worth nothing like that sum at the time of the fire?’ Now, what am I to do? Well, I will tell you what this Joshua did. He insisted upon having the whole thousand pounds, and the gentleman answered by saying that he believed Joshua had purposely set fire to his own house in order to secure a thousand pounds for a lot of old rubbish in it that wasn’t worth twopence ha’penny. D’yunderstand?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Very well, then, and listen to this. If the gentleman spoke true, Joshua had fallen in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim, which means that he had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, or, in other words had, in trying to catch the Insurance gentleman, been nabbed himself by the law. For arson is arson, and fraud fraud, and the gentleman with the watch-chain isn’t to be caught with a pinch of salt on his tail. But that was not the worst. Human bones had been found among the débris of the building, and ugly rumours got about that these bones were Abel’s bones—the bones of an unhappy victim of Joshua’s murderous hate. The man had disappeared, the brothers’ deadly quarrel was recalled; it was whispered that the fire might owe itself to a double motive—that, in short, Joshua had designed, at one blow, to secure the thousand pounds and destroy the evidences of a great crime. Joshua, sir, was arrested and put upon his trial for murder and arson.”
I was listening with all my eyes and ears.