"He—he might never learn," Johnson Boller said, without even trying to be convincing.
Anthony laughed forlornly.
"Hell learn; I'm done for!" said he. "It's as good as done and over with now, Johnson. Almost every cent I have in the world is invested in the firm, you know, and once that goes to pieces I—why, great Heaven, Johnson! I'll have to get out and work for a living!"
Johnson Boller, for a little, said nothing at all. Coming from another man, he would have fancied the statements largely exaggeration and imagination; coming from Anthony he knew that they were mostly solid truth.
"Well, I told you in the first place that kid meant trouble," he muttered.
"You have a prophetic soul!" Anthony sighed.
"Trouble isn't the word!" Mr. Boller mused further. "If you tell the truth, according to your figuring, the old gentleman will ruin you—but that doesn't matter much, because when you've told the truth it's a dead sure thing Vining will let the daylight through you, so that you'll have no need for money anyway. And if you go on trying to keep it all dark and succeed in doing it, that Hitchin idiot will have us both jailed for murder—and we'll have to produce a David Prentiss before we get out!"
Anthony, gazing fixedly at him, felt hope that hardly dared to be creeping into his eyes.
"Johnson, could we get hold of a boy somewhere and bribe him?" he asked.
"To do what?"