“You still think, sir, that he has no special designs against you?”
“Against me? Certainly not! He used my name simply because he happens—I’d like to discover how!—to know enough about me to serve his turn. I don’t know how long he has been acting me, I’m sure.”
“He must have some way of keeping your affairs before him, sir. Surely, he knows the Ossokosee House and the people there very well indeed.”
“No, that don’t follow,” returned Mr. Hilliard. “He must have been on the train longer than you think, and within ear-shot of you. Such characters are amazingly clever in making a little knowledge go a great way, and, besides, he drew more from you both with each sentence. Didn’t he contrive, too, to get hold of my letter by that impudent dodge? Mark my words, those torn pieces of handwriting will bring me a fine forged check some day unless I take good care. My dear boy,” Mr. Hilliard continued, less ruefully, “under the circumstances the rascal had ten chances to your one, and it’s not strange you were bowled over.”
“But what was it all for?” cried Philip once again. “What object was there for such a trick? But that brings us around just to where we started.”
“My dear fellow,” rejoined Mr. Hilliard, rising and leaning on the back of his great chair, “his object I don’t think was any worse than the one we have decided upon. Surely, that is unfavorable enough to you, too. He is a common sharper. There are hundreds of them all about the country. He was coming on from B——, where, I dare say, he had been losing money. Sitting near you he heard you discuss this trip that you are making. Every thing you said implied that you were going alone; and that meant that one or the other of you carried a couple of hundred dollars, or perhaps more—”
“We didn’t say a word about money.”
“But your whole look and conversation told him of your having it! Very well, then; how to get it from you was the task before him. It was simple for such a scamp, if he was lucky enough to be a little familiar with my doings and gathered your references together. There are scores of scoundrels in this big city, Philip, who make a business of becoming versed in the looks, friends, history, every thing, of respectable men on purpose to make use of their information to swindle other persons.”
“I’ve heard that,” said Philip, ruefully; “but I never expected to find out how neatly it could be tried upon me.”
Mr. Hilliard laughed. Nobody expected it. “Of course, the mainspring of his fraud was my failure to get aboard the train. After he was certain that I had not kept to my plan he marched up to you. ‘Nothing venture, nothing have,’ is the motto of a blackleg. The game was in his hands. He must have dreaded my possible turning-up all the time he devoted himself to you; but practice in such acting makes perfect. All his care after the first instance lay in seeming perfectly at ease with you. That most lucky falling into Mr. Fox’s cellar separated you and cut the fraud short. He must have raged when he found that you failed to get aboard the train!”