"No fakement about it, is there?" said Mr. Griffiths, first holding the note up to the light, then spreading it flat on the table, and going carefully over it back and front. "I've been dropped in the hole too often by flimsies not to be precious careful about 'em. No. Matthew Marshall--all them coily things in the water-mark and that; all right. I think you ought to make it a little more; I do, indeed."
"Make it a little more! I like that. Why, what the devil could you have done without me? It's true you first heard of the coppered stiff from Tony; but you didn't trouble a bit about it. Who set all the boys to hunt up this cove? who found him at last? and who walked in as bold as brass this morning, and checked him out of fifty quid without a stitch of evidence? Why, you daredn't have gone to his crib, to start with; and if you had, he'd never have seen you; the flunkey would have kicked you out for an area-sneak or a gonoph. Why, even I had some bother to get in; so what would have become of you?"
Mr. Effingham was only a little man, but he swelled so with self-importance as, in the eyes of his companion, to look very big indeed. He bounced and swaggered and spoke so loud as quite to quell the unfortunate Griffiths, who began, with due submission, to apologize for his own shortcomings and deprecate his friend's wrath.
"Well, I know all that fast enough, and I only just hinted; but you're down upon a cove so. However, it's a fine thing for us both, ain't it? He'll be as good as a bank to us for years to come, will this swell."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Mr. Effingham thoughtfully.
"How do you mean, not so sure of that?" asked Griffiths.
"Well, you see, he's a long way off being a fool; he's not half so soft as Tony led us to believe. He downed on me once or twice as quick as lightning; and I think it was only my way of putting it, and his being taken sudden on the hop, that made him shell out."
"You think that after he's thought the matter over he'll fancy he's been a flat?"
"Well, not exactly that. You see the higher a fellow climbs the worse it is when he falls. This Mitford wouldn't have cared a cuss for this thing in the old days; he'd have stood the racket of it easy. But it's different now; he's a big swell; its 'Sir Charles' and 'my Lady,' pony-phe-aton and 'orses and grooms, nice wife, and all that. He'd come an awful smasher if anything was to trip him up just now, and he knows it. That's our hold upon him."
"And that's what will make it easy for us to squeeze him."