“Go on—come to the arrest—what was it for?” broke in Grenfell, impatiently.
“Cheating at cards, Sir,” plumped out the other, half vexed at being deemed prosy. “That’s the charge, Sir; false cards and cogged dice, and the police have them in their hands this minute. It was all this fellow’s doing, Sir; it was he persuaded Mr. Dolly to set up the rooms, and the tables, and here’s what it’s come to!” “And there was false play?”
“So they say, Sir. One of the ladies that was taken up is well known to the police; she is an Italian Marchioness—at least they call her so—and the story goes ‘well protected,’ as they say here.”
“I don’t see that there’s anything to be done in the matter, Fisk; the law will deal with them, and pretty sharply, too, and none can interfere with it. Are you compromised yourself?”
“No, Sir, not in the least. I was back and forward to Town once or twice a week getting bills discounted and the like, but I never went near the rooms. I took good care of that.”
“Such being the case, I suspect your affection for your master will not prove fatal to you—eh?”
“Perhaps not, Sir; a strong constitution and reg’lar habit may help me over it, but there’s another point I ain’t so easy about. Mr. Dolly has got a matter of nigh four hundred pounds of mine. I lent it at twenty-five per cent, to him last year, and I begin to fear the security is not what it ought to be.”
“There’s something in that, certainly,” said Grenfell, slowly. “Yes, Sir, there’s a great deal in it, because they say here, if Mr. Dolly should be sent to the galleys ever so short a time, he loses civil rights, and when he loses them, he needn’t pay no debts to any one.”
“Blessed invention those galleys must be, if they could give the immunity you mention!” said Grenfell, laughing; “but I opine your law is not quite accurate—at any rate, Fisk, there’s nothing to be done for him. If he stood alone in the case, it is just possible there would be a chance of helping him, but here he must accept the lot of his associates. By the way, what did he mean by that mock marriage? What was the object of it?” This query of Grenfell’s was thrown out in a sort of random carelessness, its real object being to see if Mr. Fisk was on “the square” with him.
“Don’t you know, Sir, that he wanted to prevent the old gent at Dalradern from marrying her? One of the great lawyers thinks that the estate doesn’t go to the Ladarelles at all if Sir Within had an heir, and though it’s not very likely, Sir, it might be possible. Master Dolly, at all events, was mortally afraid of it, and he always said that the mere chance cost him from fifteen to twenty per cent, in his dealings with money-lenders.”