“Hey! say what I have to say? How I can read your fat lips, Max! I never feel my deafness when you are speaking. Well, I am saying what I have to say. I don’t often speak out like this.”
“Only when you want money,” muttered Max.
“Only when I want money? Right. There, I told you I could read off your lips every word you say, so don’t begin to curse me, and wish I was dead, because it will only make me want more. Think it, if you like. I say, you must look sharp after that boy Fred, or he’ll go to the bad.”
Max frowned.
“If he was half such a lad as Tom!”
“Tom’s a scoundrel—a vagabond!” exclaimed Max furiously.
“Yes, yes, of course. To be sure he is. Every one is who doesn’t do as you wish, Max Shingle. I’m a horrible old scoundrel, and yet you’re obliged to put up with me. You can’t afford to offend me, and I come to your house as often as I like; and I shall keep on doing so, because it’s good for you. I’m like a conscience to you, and a devilish ugly old conscience, eh?—a deaf conscience—and I keep you from being a bigger scoundrel than you are. I say, Max, you’d give a thousand pounds down, now, to hear I was dead, wouldn’t you?”
“What is the good of talking like this?” said Max, leaning over to whisper to his visitor.
“Hey? What’s the good? A deal—does you good. I say, Max, I’ve often thought that you might be tempted to get me killed—by accident, of course. It is tempting, I know. You’d feel as if the old slate with the nasty writing on was wiped clean with a sponge. But it would be so ugly for such a good man to be exposed to such a temptation, and uglier still to add the crime of side-blow murder to his other sins. So do you know what I’ve done to save you from temptation?”
There was a curious malignity of expression in the old man’s face as, with a chuckling laugh, he asked his question and saw its effect.