“I have sent for Ewin Jones, the lawyer, and expect him by the down train; if he should say anything worth repeating to you, I 'll add it ere I seal this.”
A little lower down the page were scrawled, half illegibly, the following few words:—
“Another search for the ball, and no better luck; it has got down amongst some nerves, where they 're afraid to follow it,—a sort of Chancery Court Jones is here, and thinks 'we 'll do,' particularly if 'the Press' blackguards Dunn well in the mean time. Remember me to A. B., and keep him from talking nonsense about the business,—for a while, at least,—that is, if you can, and
“Believe me, yours, as ever,
“C. Davis.”
CHAPTER XXXV. THE TRIAL
Scarcely had the town been struck by the large placards announcing the dreadful murder of Davenport Dunn, which paraded the streets in all directions, when a second edition of the morning papers brought the first tidings of the ruin that was to follow that event; and now, in quick succession, came news that the treasurer of the grand Glengariff Company had gone off with some fifty thousand pounds; that the great Ossory Bank had stopped payment; companies on every hand smashing'; misfortune and calamity everywhere. Terrible as was the detail which the inquest revealed, the whole interest of the world was turned to the less striking but scarcely less astounding news that society had for years back been the dupe of the most crafty and unprincipled knave of all Europe, that the great idol of its worship, the venerated and respected in all enterprises of industry, the man of large philanthropy and wide benevolence, was a schemer and a swindler, unprincipled and unfeeling. The fatal machinery of deception and falsehood which his life maintained crumbled to ruin at the very moment of his death; he was himself the mainspring of all fraud, and when he ceased to dictate, the game of roguery was over. While, therefore, many deplored the awful crime which had just been committed, and sorrowed over the stain cast upon our age and our civilization, there arose amidst their grief the wilder and more heartrending cry of thousands brought to destitution and beggary by this bold, bad man.
Of the vast numbers who had dealings with him, scarcely any escaped: false title-deeds, counterfeited shares, forged scrip abounded. The securities intrusted to his keeping in all the trustfulness of an unlimited confidence had been pledged for loans of money; vast sums alleged to have been advanced on mortgage were embezzled without a shadow of security. From the highest in the peerage to the poorest peasant, all were involved in the same scheme of ruin, and the great fortunes of the rich and the hardly saved pittance of the poor alike engulfed. So suddenly did the news break upon the world that it actually seemed incredible. It was not alone a shock given to mercantile credit and commercial honesty, but it seemed an outrage against whatever assumed to be high-principled and honorable. It could not be denied that this man had been the world's choicest favorite. Upon him had been lavished all the honors and rewards usually reserved for the greatest benefactors of their kind. The favors of the Crown, the friendship and intimacy with the highest in station, immense influence with the members of the Government, power and patronage to any extent, and, greater than all these, because more wide-spread and far-reaching, a sort of acceptance that all he said and did and planned and projected was certain to be for the best, and that they who opposed his views or disparaged his conceptions were sure to be mean-minded and envious men, jealous of the noble ascendancy of his great nature. And all this because he was rich and could enrich others! Had the insane estimate of this man been formed by those fighting the hard battle of fortune, and so crushed by poverty that even a glimpse of affluence was a gleam of Paradise, it might have been more pardonable; but far from it. Davenport Dunn's chief adherents and his primest flatterers were themselves great in station and rolling in wealth; they were many of them the princes of the land. The richest banker of all Europe—he whose influence has often decided the fate of contending nations—was Dunn's tried and trusted friend. The great Minister, whose opening speech of a session was the mot d'ordre for half the globe, had taken counsel with him, stooping to ask his advice, and condescending to indorse his opinions. A proud old noble, as haughty a member of his order as the peerage possessed, did not disdain to accept him for a son-in-law; and now the great banker was to find himself defrauded, the great minister disgraced, and the noble Lord who had stooped to his alliance was to see his estate dissipated and his fortune lost!
What a moral strain did not the great monitors of our age pour forth; what noble words of reproof fell from Pulpit and Press upon the lust of wealth, the base pursuit of gold; what touching contrasts were drawn between the hard-won competence of the poor man and the ill-gotten abundance of the gambler! How impressively was the lesson proclaimed, that patient industry was a nobler characteristic of a people than successful enterprise, and that it was not to lucky chances and accidental success, but to the virtues of truthfulness, order, untiring labor, and economy, that England owed the high place she occupied amongst the nations of the earth. All this was, perhaps, true; the only pity was that the pæan over our greatness should be also a funeral wail over thousands reduced to beggary and want! For weeks the newspapers had no other themes than the misery of this man's cruel frauds. Magistrates were besieged by appeals from people reduced to the last destitution; public offices crowded with applicants, pressing to know if the titles or securities they held as the sole guarantees of a livelihood, were true or false. All confidence seemed gone. Men trembled at every letter they opened; and none knew whether the tidings of each moment might not be the announcement of utter ruin.