“Is there any way, sir, wherein my humble services will avail?” asked the man, thoroughly understanding the intent of that look.
“Yes—on you must I rely in this matter,” said the lawyer, after a few minutes’ deep cogitation. “Mr. Green,” continued Heathcote, again fixing on him his small, malignant, soul-reading eyes, “you will excuse me for a moment if I recall the past to your recollection——”
“But why, sir—why!” exclaimed the clerk, his pale face suddenly becoming paler still and his limbs trembling convulsively.
“Because I choose,” returned his master, brutally: “because it suits my present purpose to remind you how much you are in my power.”
The wretched clerk moaned audibly, but uttered not another word.
“Twelve years ago, Mr. Green,” resumed Heathcote, with deep emphasis and in a measured tone, as if he were determined that not a syllable which he intended to say should be lost on the unhappy man who was thus undergoing a painful—agonising infliction,—“twelve years ago, Mr. Green, you were an attorney in practice for yourself. An accident, the particulars of which it is not necessary for me to recite, made me acquainted with a fact which placed you entirely at my mercy. You and a gentleman named Clarence Villiers had been left the joint guardians of a boy then a little more than eight years old; and a thousand pounds were invested in the funds in the name of yourself and the said Clarence Villiers. It had been agreed that you should be the acting trustee. You wanted money—you forged the name of Clarence Villiers to the necessary deed—and you sold out the thousand pounds.”
The miserable clerk groaned again, more audibly than before: but his master heeded not the intense agony his words inflicted.
“Yes—you sold out the money, and appropriated it to your purposes,” continued the remorseless attorney. “The fact came to my knowledge,—and I offered to save you, on condition that you should serve me—that you should devote yourself to me, body and soul—that you should see only with my eyes, hear only with my ears, and use your hands and your intellectual powers as I directed. I required a person of this description: I was looking out for such an one at the moment when accident thus placed you in my power. We soon came to terms. You gave up a business that was not worth retaining—and you became my head clerk. I have paid you two guineas a week with the most scrupulous regularity—and I have often made you little presents, as even this very morning have I done. But what more have I been generous enough to do for you? Why—I have regularly paid the interest of the thousand pounds for you, as if it were still in the Bank of England; and your ward suspects not that his capital is gone. Neither does your co-trustee Clarence Villiers suspect it, Mr. Green,” added Heathcote, emphatically. “But in six weeks’ time, the youth will have completed his twenty-first year; and he will apply to Mr. Villiers and yourself for his thousand pounds. Mr. Villiers will ask to accompany you to the Bank to make over the money in due form—for Mr. Villiers is an honourable man. But the money will not be there—unless I replace it for you, and thus save you from transportation for life!”
“And you have promised that you will replace it, kind sir—you have undertaken to save me from exposure, degradation, and punishment!” exclaimed the clerk, his voice and manner becoming almost wild in the earnestness of their appeal.
“Yes—and I will keep my word, Green,” responded Heathcote. “If I have now recapitulated circumstances which are necessarily so indelibly stamped upon your memory, it was merely to convince you that I have it in my power to save you from a terrible fate—or to crush you as I would a viper beneath my heel. We shall not be the worse friends because we understand our relative positions; and mark me—never, never would I place myself in the power of a man unless he were ten thousand times more entangled in my meshes than I could possibly be in his.”