"You're in the tail, I suppose?" he remarked at last.
"Of course I am. If my brother John died without children, everything was to come to me and my heirs. My brother had only a life interest in the place."
"Then I don't see how he was to blame, doing as he did, if it was entailed all along on his son." Mr. Swayne spoke with a certain cautious interest.
"He never had a son. If he had disowned his wife's child, everything would have come to me."
"Lor!" said Mr. Swayne, "I did not understand it was so near as that. Then this little chap, this John, he's all that stands between you and the property, is he? Failing him, it still comes to you?"
Mr. Swayne's small tightly-wedged eyes, with the expression of dissipated boot-buttons, were beginning to show a gleam of professional interest.
"Yes, it would; but John won't fail," said Colonel Tempest, savagely. "He will keep us out. We shall be as poor as rats as long as we live, and shall see him chucking our money right and left!" and Colonel Tempest, who was by this time hardly responsible for what he said, ground his teeth and cursed his enemy in a paroxysm of rage and drink. Mr. Swayne observed him attentively.
"Don't take on so, Colonel," he remarked soothingly. "Dear me, what's a little boy?—What's a little boy here or there," he continued, meditatively, "one more or one less? There's a sight of little kids in the world; some wanted, some not. I've known cases, Colonel"—here he fixed his eyes on the ceiling—"cases with parents, maybe, singing up in heaven and takin' no notice, when little chaps that weren't wanted, that nobody took to, seemed to—meet with an accident, get snuffed out by mistake."
"John won't meet with an accident," said Colonel Tempest passionately. "I wish to —— he would!"
"I look at it this way," said Mr. Swayne, philosophically. "There's things gentlemen can do, and there's things they can't. A gentleman is a party that can't do his dirty work for himself, though as often as not he has a deal on his hands that must be shoved through somehow. The thing is to find parties who'll take what I call a personal interest, if it's made worth their while. Now about this little boy, that no one wants, and is a comfort to nobody. It's quite curious the things little boys will do; out in boats alone, outriggers now, as dangerous as can be, or leaning out of railway carriages in tunnels. Lor! you never know what they won't be up to, little rascals. They're made of mischief. Forty thousand a year, is it, he is keeping you out of, and yours by right? Well, I don't say anything about that; but all I say is, I have friends I can find that are open to a bet. What's the harm of betting a thousand pounds to one sovereign that you never come into the property? It ain't likely, as you say. What's the harm of a bet, provided you don't mind risking your money? Let's say, just for the sake of—of argument, that there was ten bets—ten bets at a thousand to one that you never come in. Ten thousand pounds to pay, if you come in after all. What's ten thousand pounds to a man with forty thousand a year?" Mr. Swayne snapped his fingers. "And no trouble to nobody. Nothing to do but to pay up quietly when the time comes. It don't concern you who takes up the bets, and you don't know either. You know nothing at all about it. You lay your money, and, look here, Colonel, you mark my words, some way or somehow, some time or other, that boy will disappear."