‘Mr Nadgett,’ said Montague, copying Jonas Chuzzlewit’s address upon a piece of paper, from the card which was still lying on the table, ‘any information about this name, I shall be glad to have myself. Don’t you mind what it is. Any you can scrape together, bring me. Bring it to me, Mr Nadgett.’
Nadgett put on his spectacles, and read the name attentively; then looked at the chairman over his glasses, and bowed; then took them off, and put them in their case; and then put the case in his pocket. When he had done so, he looked, without his spectacles, at the paper as it lay before him, and at the same time produced his pocket-book from somewhere about the middle of his spine. Large as it was, it was very full of documents, but he found a place for this one; and having clasped it carefully, passed it by a kind of solemn legerdemain into the same region as before.
He withdrew with another bow and without a word; opening the door no wider than was sufficient for his passage out; and shutting it as carefully as before. The chairman of the board employed the rest of the morning in affixing his sign-manual of gracious acceptance to various new proposals of annuity-purchase and assurance. The Company was looking up, for they flowed in gayly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MR. MONTAGUE AT HOME. AND MR. JONAS CHUZZLEWIT AT HOME
There were many powerful reasons for Jonas Chuzzlewit being strongly prepossessed in favour of the scheme which its great originator had so boldly laid open to him; but three among them stood prominently forward. Firstly, there was money to be made by it. Secondly, the money had the peculiar charm of being sagaciously obtained at other people’s cost. Thirdly, it involved much outward show of homage and distinction: a board being an awful institution in its own sphere, and a director a mighty man. ‘To make a swingeing profit, have a lot of chaps to order about, and get into regular good society by one and the same means, and them so easy to one’s hand, ain’t such a bad look-out,’ thought Jonas. The latter considerations were only second to his avarice; for, conscious that there was nothing in his person, conduct, character, or accomplishments, to command respect, he was greedy of power, and was, in his heart, as much a tyrant as any laureled conqueror on record.
But he determined to proceed with cunning and caution, and to be very keen on his observation of the gentility of Mr Montague’s private establishment. For it no more occurred to this shallow knave that Montague wanted him to be so, or he wouldn’t have invited him while his decision was yet in abeyance, than the possibility of that genius being able to overreach him in any way, pierced through his self-deceit by the inlet of a needle’s point. He had said, in the outset, that Jonas was too sharp for him; and Jonas, who would have been sharp enough to believe him in nothing else, though he had solemnly sworn it, believed him in that, instantly.
It was with a faltering hand, and yet with an imbecile attempt at a swagger, that he knocked at his new friend’s door in Pall Mall when the appointed hour arrived. Mr Bailey quickly answered to the summons. He was not proud and was kindly disposed to take notice of Jonas; but Jonas had forgotten him.
‘Mr Montague at home?’