"You draw a flattering likeness of your friend," said Morton."
"O," said Richards, laughing, "I cut half my foreign acquaintance, now that I am at home."
Before leaving his new companion, Morton obtained from him the name and direction of the person of whom he had spoken as likely to know where Speyer was to be found. Left alone at length, he pondered on what he had heard:—
"So Vinal applied to Richards, to learn Speyer's address, when he wrote to him to report me dead. Speyer in America!—having interviews with Vinal!—and flush of money! Can it be possible that this agent of his villany has become the instrument of his punishment?—that the Furies are already on his track? If Speyer kept Vinal's letter, as, under the circumstances, such a calculating knave would be apt to do, he has that in his hands which would make my friend open his purse strings; yes, make him coin his life blood, to satisfy him. It is past doubting; Vinal has it now; this cormorant is preying upon him."
That afternoon Morton took the night train to New York, in search of Speyer.
CHAPTER LVII.
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Though those that are betrayed Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor Stands in worse case of woe.—Cymbeline. |
Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair, when a clerk from his office came to bring him his morning letters. He looked over the superscriptions till he saw one in a foreign hand. Vinal compressed his pale lips. When the clerk had left the room, he glanced about him nervously, tore open the letter, and read it in haste.
"The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it up like a sponge; or, rather, I am the sponge, and he means to wring me dry. In jail! Well, he has found his place, for once. Six hundred dollars! That, I suppose, is to pay his fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him loose. I wish he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie there, and rot. I must send him something—enough to keep him in play. No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and I may turn it to account. I will write to him that, if he will return me my letters, I will give him a thousand dollars now, and an annuity of five hundred for six years to come. I shall do well if I can draw the viper's teeth at that price. Then I can breathe again; unless Morton should have suspected the trick I played him, or—what if he should meet with Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor saw him, and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague. I wish they had shot him in the prison, as I am told they meant to do. There would have been one stumbling block away; one lion out of my path. But now the sword hangs over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under a harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he threatens, print my letters, and placard them about the streets! I will buy them out of his hands if it cost all I have. And even then I shall not be safe, as long as this ruffian is above ground. With him and Morton to haunt me, my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell."