‘Oh!’ said Montague, with a laugh. ‘We’ll not enter into that.’
‘Using it to make a beggar of me. Is that the use you mean?’
‘No.’
‘Ecod,’ muttered Jonas, bitterly. ‘That’s the use in which your account does lie. You speak the truth there.’
‘I wish you to venture (it’s a very safe venture) a little more with us, certainly, and to keep quiet,’ said Montague. ‘You promised me you would; and you must. I say it plainly, Chuzzlewit, you must. Reason the matter. If you don’t, my secret is worthless to me: and being so, it may as well become the public property as mine; better, for I shall gain some credit, bringing it to light. I want you, besides, to act as a decoy in a case I have already told you of. You don’t mind that, I know. You care nothing for the man (you care nothing for any man; you are too sharp; so am I, I hope); and could bear any loss of his with pious fortitude. Ha, ha, ha! You have tried to escape from the first consequence. You cannot escape it, I assure you. I have shown you that to-day. Now, I am not a moral man, you know. I am not the least in the world affected by anything you may have done; by any little indiscretion you may have committed; but I wish to profit by it if I can; and to a man of your intelligence I make that free confession. I am not at all singular in that infirmity. Everybody profits by the indiscretion of his neighbour; and the people in the best repute, the most. Why do you give me this trouble? It must come to a friendly agreement, or an unfriendly crash. It must. If the former, you are very little hurt. If the latter—well! you know best what is likely to happen then.’
Jonas left the window, and walked up close to him. He did not look him in the face; it was not his habit to do that; but he kept his eyes towards him—on his breast, or thereabouts—and was at great pains to speak slowly and distinctly in reply. Just as a man in a state of conscious drunkenness might be.
‘Lying is of no use now,’ he said. ‘I did think of getting away this morning, and making better terms with you from a distance.’
‘To be sure! to be sure!’ replied Montague. ‘Nothing more natural. I foresaw that, and provided against it. But I am afraid I am interrupting you.’
‘How the devil,’ pursued Jonas, with a still greater effort, ‘you made choice of your messenger, and where you found him, I’ll not ask you. I owed him one good turn before to-day. If you are so careless of men in general, as you said you were just now, you are quite indifferent to what becomes of such a crop-tailed cur as that, and will leave me to settle my account with him in my own manner.’
If he had raised his eyes to his companion’s face, he would have seen that Montague was evidently unable to comprehend his meaning. But continuing to stand before him, with his furtive gaze directed as before, and pausing here only to moisten his dry lips with his tongue, the fact was lost upon him. It might have struck a close observer that this fixed and steady glance of Jonas’s was a part of the alteration which had taken place in his demeanour. He kept it riveted on one spot, with which his thoughts had manifestly nothing to do; like as a juggler walking on a cord or wire to any dangerous end, holds some object in his sight to steady him, and never wanders from it, lest he trip.