“Why, there 's more writs after the promoters this morning than ever there was scrip for paid-up capital. We 're all in for it—every man of us.”
“Was it a mere bubble, then,—a fraud?”
“I don't know what you call a bubble, or what you mean by a fraud. We had all that constitutes a company: we had a scheme, and we had a lord. t If an over-greedy public wants grandeur and gain besides, it must be disappointed; as I told the general meeting, 'You don't expect profit as well as the peerage, do you?'”
“You yourself told me there was coal.”
“So there was. I am ready to maintain it still. Is n't that money, Bramleigh?” said he, taking a handful of silver from his pocket; “good coin of the realm, with her Majesty's image? But if you asked me if there was much more where it came from—why, the witness might, as the newspapers say, hesitate and show confusion.”
“You mean, then, in short, there was only coal enough to form a pretext for a company?”
“I tell you what I mean,” said Cutbill, sturdily. “I bolted from London rather than be stuck in a witness-box and badgered by a cross-examining barrister, and I 'm not going to expose myself to the same sort of diversion here from you.”
“I assure you, sir, the matter had no interest for me, beyond the opportunity it afforded you of exculpation.”
“For the exculpatory part, I can take it easy,” said Cutbill, with a dry laugh. “I wish I had nothing heavier on my heart than the load of my conscience; but I 've been signing my name to deeds, and writing Tom Cutbill across acceptances, in a sort of indiscriminate way, that in the calmer hours before a Commissioner in Bankruptcy ain't so pleasant. I must say, Bramleigh, your distinguished relative, Culduff, doesn't cut up well.”
“I think, Mr. Cutbill, if you have any complaint to make of Lord Culduff, you might have chosen a more fitting auditor than his brother-in-law.”