"Well, well," his superior said, somewhat mollified, "that will account for it. I thought at first that you must have been drinking. You had better take your hat and be off. Go to the nearest chemist and take a dose, and then go home and lie down. You are worse than of no use in the state that you are. I hope that you will be all right in the morning, for we are, as you know, very busy at present, and cannot spare a hand. Tear up that draft and hand the will and instructions to Mr. Macleod. The General will be down here at ten o'clock to-morrow to see it; he is like most military men, sharp and prompt, and when he wants a thing done he expects to have it done at once."
"You are feeling better, I hope, this morning?" he said, when Dawkins came into the office at the usual hour next day, "though I must say that you look far from well. Do you think that you are capable of work?"
"I think so, sir; at any rate my head is better."
It was true that the clerk did not look well, for he had had no sleep all night, but had tossed restlessly in bed, endeavoring, but in vain, to hit on some manner of extracting a portion of the legacy from the ex-proprietor of the gambling house. The more he thought, the more hopeless seemed the prospect. John Simcoe was eminently a man whom it would be unsafe to anger. The promptness and decision of his methods had gained him at least the respect of all the frequenters of his establishment, and just as he had sternly kept order there, so he would deal with any individual who crossed his path. He held the best cards, too; and while a disclosure of the past could hardly injure him seriously, he had the means of causing the ruin and disgrace of Dawkins himself, if he ventured to attack him.
The clerk was himself shrewd in his own way, but he had the sense to feel that he was no match for John Simcoe, and the conclusion that he finally came to was that he must wait and watch events, and that, so far as he could see, his only chance of obtaining a penny of the legacy was to follow implicitly the instructions Simcoe had given him, in which case possibly he might receive a present when the money was paid.
About a fortnight after he knew the will had been signed by General Mathieson, Simcoe went down to a small house on Pentonville Hill, where one of the ablest criminals in London resided, passing unsuspected under the eyes of the police in the character of a man engaged in business in the City. A peculiar knock brought him to the door.
"Ah, is it you, Simcoe?" he said; "why, I have not seen you for months. I did not know you for the moment, for you have taken all the hair off your face."
"I have made a change, Harrison. I have given up the billiard rooms, and am now a swell with lodgings in Jermyn Street."