"I tell you, sir, if anything goes wrong with me, I'll make a clean breast of it—everything—ha, ha, ha!—upon my honour—and we two shall grill together."
Larkin had no idea he was going in for so hazardous and huge a game when he sat down to play. His vision was circumscribed, his prescience small. He looked at the beast he had imported, and wished him in a deep grave in Scutari, with a turbaned-stone over his head, the scheme quashed, and the stakes drawn.
But wishing would not do. The spirit was evoked—in nothing more manageable than at first; on the contrary, rather more insane. Nerve was needed, subtlety, patience, and he must manage him.
"Why the devil did you bring me here, sir, if you were not prepared to treat me properly? You know my circumstances, and you want to practise on my misfortunes, you vile rogue, to mix me up in your fraudulent machinations."
"Pray, sir, not so loud. Do—do command yourself," remonstrated Larkin, almost affectionately.
"Do you think I'm come all this way, at the risk of my life, to be your slave, you shabby, canting attorney? I'd better be where I was, or in kingdom come. By Allah! sir, you have me, and I'm your master, and you shan't buy my soul for a piastre."
There came a loud knock at the hall-door, and if it had been a shot and killed them both, the debaters in the drawing-room could not have been more instantaneously breathless.
Down glided Sarah Rumble, who had been expecting this visit, to pay the taxman.
And she had hardly taken his receipt, when Mr. Larkin, very pink, endeavouring to smile in his discomfiture, and observing with a balmy condescension, "A sweet day, Mrs. Rumble," appeared in the hall, shook his ears a little, and adjusted his hat, and went forth, and Rosemary Court saw him no more for some time.