“Won't there be a Jolly smash!” said Davis, with a bitter laugh. “I take it there's not been any one has 'done the trick' these fifty years like this fellow.”
“I suspect you 're right there,” murmured Hankes.
“I have never seen him but once, and then only for a few minutes, but I read him like a printed book. He had put on the grand integrity and British-mercantile-honesty frown to scowl me down, to remind Davis, 'the leg,' that he was in the presence of Dunn, the Unimpeachable, but I put one eye a little aslant, this way, and I just said, 'Round the corner, old fellow,—round the corner!' Oh, didn't he look what the Yankees call 'mean ugly'!”
“He 'll never forget it to you, that's certain.”
“If he did, I 'd try and brush up his memory a bit,” said Davis, curtly. “He must be a rare sharp one,” added he, after a pause.
“The cleverest man in England, I don't care who the other is,” cried Hankes, with enthusiasm. “When the crash comes,—it will be in less than a month from this day,—the world will discover that they're done to the tune of between three and four millions sterling, and I defy the best accountant that ever stepped to trace out where the frauds originated,—whether it was the Railways smashed the Mines, the Mines that ruined the Great Ossory, the Great Ossory that dipped the Drainage, or the Drainage that swamped the Glengariff, not to speak of all the incidental confusion about estates never paid for, and sums advanced on mock mortgage, together, with cancelled scrip reissued, preference shares circulated before the current ones, and dock warrants for goods that never existed. And that ain't all” continued Hankes, to whom the attentive eagerness of Grog's manner vouched for the interest his narrative excited,—“that ain't all; but there isn't a class nor condition in life, from the peer to the poorest laboring-man, that he has n't in some way involved in his rogueries, and made him almost a partner in the success. Each speculation being dependent for its solvency on the ruin of some other, Ossory will hate Glengariff, Drainage detest Mines, Railways curse Patent Fuel, and so on. I 'll give the Equity Court and the Bankrupt Commissioners fifty years and they'll not wind up the concern.”
Grog rubbed his hands gleefully, and laughed aloud.
“Then all the people that will be compromised!” said Hankes; “Glumthal himself is not too clean-handed; lords and fine ladies that lent their names to this or that company, chairmen of committees in the House that did n't disdain to accept five hundred or a thousand shares as a mark of grateful recognition for pushing a bill through its second reading; ay, and great mercantile houses that discounted freely on forged acceptances, owning that they thought the best of all security was the sight of a convict-hulk and a felon's jacket, and that no man was such prompt pay as he that took a loan of a friend's signature. What a knockdown blow for all that lath-and-plaster edifice we dignify by the name of Credit, when the world sees that it is a loaf the rogue can take a slice out of as well as the honest man!”
“Won't we have stunning leaders in the 'Times' about it!” cried Grog. “It will go deuced hard with the Ministry that have made this fellow a peer.”
“Yes, they'll have to go out,” said Hanked, gravely; “a cabinet may defend a bad measure,—they 'll never fight for a bad man.”