"Ask the syndicate," said Jones, looking at Spiffy in a significant way.
I felt quite startled, for I expected to see a group of foreigners composing this institution walk into the room. It was not until I had looked again to Spiffy for information, and was met by the single open eye of that gentleman, that I drew an inference and a very long breath.
"Spiffy," I said, "I am getting stifled—the moral atmosphere of this place is tainted; take me to the sweetest board-room in the neighbourhood—I want to speak to you on private business."
"Haven't time," said Spiffy, looking at his watch.
"Not to settle little Lady Broadhem's little affair?" said I, in a whisper.
Spiffy got uncommonly pale, but recovered himself in a second. "All right, old fellow;" and he poured a few hurried words in an incomprehensible dialect into Jones's ear, and led the way to the Suburban Washing-ground Company's board-room, which was the most minute apartment of the kind I had ever seen.
I shall not enter into the particulars of what passed between Spiffy and myself on this occasion. In the first place, it is so dry that it would bore you; in the second place, it was so complicated, and Spiffy's explanations seemed to complicate it so much the more, that I could not make it clear to you if I wished; and, in the last, I do not feel justified in divulging all Lady Broadhem's money difficulties and private crises. Suffice it to say, that in the course of our conversation Spiffy was obliged to confide to me many curious facts connected with his own line of life, and more especially with the peculiar functions which he exercised in his capacity of a "syndic," under the seal of solemn secrecy. Without the hold over him which this little insight into his transactions has given me, I should not be able to report so much of our conversation as I have. Nevertheless I thought it right to tell him how much of it he would shortly see in print.
"Gracious, Frank," said Spiffy, petrified with alarm, "you don't mean to say you are going to publish all I told you about the Gorgon Tompkinses and the Bodwinkles? How am I ever to keep them going if you do? Besides, there are a number of other fellows in the same line as I am. Just conceive the injury you will inflict upon society generally—nobody will thank you. The rich 'middles' who are looking forward to this kind of advancement will be furious; all of us 'promoters' will hate you, and 'la haute' will probably cut you. Why can't you keep quiet, instead of trying to get yourself and everybody else into hot water?"
"Spiffy," said I, solemnly, "when I devoted myself to 'mission work,' as they call it in Exeter Hall, I counted the cost, as you will see on referring back to my first chapter. I am still only at the beginning. I have a long and heavy task before me; but my only excuse for remaining in society is that I am labouring for its regeneration."
"You won't remain in it long," said Spiffy, "if you carry on in your present line. What do you want to do? Eradicate snobbism from the British breast?—never! We should all, from the highest to the lowest, perish of inanition without it."