Then Mundon drew Ben aside. “’Tain’t no use talkin’ to him. I know him—his name’s Fish and he’s a reg’lar old shark. Rich as anythin’—owns piles of tenements and grinds his tenants down ter their marrer bones. I saw him nosin’ ’round here on the day we made our first clean-up. The question is, What are you goin’ to do?”
“O, I don’t know!” Ben cried in despair.
The two strangers were leisurely surveying the arastra and its contents.
“Know any lawyer?” Mundon asked.
“No.”
A recollection of Mr. Hale, who had been in the Collector’s office on the day of his visit, flashed before him. He believed him to be the great lawyer of whom he had heard. He had appeared interested in the venture, if skeptical; and since then the scheme had proved a success. Ben was thinking very hard.
“’Cause if you do,” Mundon continued, “he might find some hole fur us to crawl out of.”
This view of the situation was humiliating, but Ben was forced to accept it.
“Stay here and watch things, while I go down town and see what can be done,” he answered. He was angrier than he had ever been in his life. The injustice of being made a victim of fraud seemed to sear his spirit like hot iron. To be tricked, cheated, and have no redress was such a monstrous wrong!
“To think,” he said to himself on his way down-town, “how I resisted the temptation not to tell old Madge my whole plan! This is the reward I get for being too conscientious. I ought not to have told a soul!”