“I’ll fight it out; I’ll go through with it,” he said at last. “The world bows down before success, no matter how it is obtained: money opens all doors, whoever knocks. I’ll go in for money—reputation be hanged. Who has got a reputation worth a button in these times? We are in the midst of a panic that will sweep away hundreds of reputations. What is the reputation of an honest bankrupt worth? Where is the flyblown reputation that money, and success, and bounce, and swagger will not cover?”
So Mr. Richard Tallant began to “fight it out” next day. He served two persons with notices of action for slander, and commenced actions for libel against two newspapers; he obtained insertion of a paragraph to this effect in a monetary journal; he attended to his duties at the Meter Works with an assiduity that astonished everybody; he wrote that letter to his father, and he fought that battle at the Meter Board which we have briefly indicated; he plunged deeper and deeper into speculations, and he was successful in almost every monetary operation in which he was engaged.
Meanwhile things were not quite so pleasant with Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs. His overthrow had been completed by poor Dibble’s confession. “Whom the gods devote to destruction, they first deprive of understanding.” Mr. Gibbs ought to have had sufficient experience of life to have known that his passion for revenge was mastering his cunning; he ought to have known enough of character to have seen that Dibble would break down in the part which he had assigned to him; but Fortune had permitted Gibbs to have his day, as she lets every other dog have his; and she selected her time and instruments accordingly for bringing his day to an end.
With justice upon his heels, he had been compelled figuratively to blot himself out; he could not only not sign his name to anything, but he could not put in a personal appearance anywhere as Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs; he had ventured to do a little business in his semi-clerical capacity, but failure was the result. The transfer of the shares which he had induced Dibble to take had never been completed, and when Gibbs benevolently took them back again they were improving; but two days after Dibble ran away, they went down to a heavy discount. Other things in which he was interested went wrong, the purse that the police held he could not hope to obtain, and he soon found himself reduced to his last fifty pounds.
He invested this sum characteristically.
Assuming his semi-clerical disguise, he took lodgings in a quiet respectable street off the Strand, purchased a Newspaper Press Directory, and wrote out the following attractive advertisements:—
“Loans.—Sums of money, varying from 2l. to 2000l., may be had for short or long periods, on personal security, on application to the undersigned. Secrecy observed in all transactions. Interest at the rate of 5 per cent. Apply (enclosing stamp for reply) to James Marfleeting, Esq., Accountant, 3, Great Charlton-street, Strand, London.”
“To Widows and Ladies in Needy Circumstances.—The advertiser has patented a new invention, which opens up employment for ladies in their own homes, whereby they can make from 1l. to 2l. a week with ease. Send 5s. in stamps for materials and instructions to the inventor and proprietor, Henry Cavendish, Esq., No. 6, Burkit-street, City, London.”
Having penned these enticing announcements, Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs called upon an engraver and ordered a couple of very business-like headings to be printed upon unimpeachable letter paper.
These he obtained in the course of the next day, and meanwhile he studied the Press Directory. This valuable work contained an elaborate index to the newspapers of the United Kingdom, giving their titles in full, the names and addresses of the publishers, with a brief description of the towns in which they were published, and the dates of their first publication. It also contained the publishers’ own descriptions of their newspapers, from which it would seem that each paper was the best medium for giving publicity to announcements of all descriptions; that several journals in the same town claimed to have the largest circulation; that they were all leading papers, first-class family papers, influential papers; some were the oldest Liberal papers, some the oldest Conservative papers, many the only Penny papers in the district.