“But I don’t think there was any foundation for the suspicion,” I protested, rather faintly, too faintly to produce any decided effect.
“We are not called upon to try the case,” he replied, chuckling at his own cunning.
“But I don’t wish to have anything to say about that old affair.”
“Then you needn’t have anything to say about it, except to me. I have begun to manage this business, and I shall finish it.”
“I don’t want to injure Tom in the estimation of any one,” I added.
“Don’t be a spooney, Paley. You must look out for your own chances. You can have this place, if we can get Tom off the track.”
Although I was not the author of the brilliant idea foreshadowed in my uncle’s remarks, I permitted him to develop it. I told him all I knew about Tom’s affair with Gorham & Welch. If I stated that those who knew anything about the matter now generally believed that the junior partner was the thief, I stated it so mildly that my uncle took no notice of it. I confess that I virtually assented to his scheme; at least, I offered no decided opposition to it. I knew that Captain Halliard had only to whisper the fact that Tom had been suspected, and had lost his situation in consequence of this suspicion, to throw my chief competitor out of the field.
Practically, I assented to the scheme; if I did anything to prevent its being carried into execution, I only “fastened the door with a boiled carrot.” I wanted the place, not alone for its emoluments, but in order, in the race of life, to surpass my friend. I regard this weak yielding as my first crime—the crime against my friend, one of the basest and most loathsome in the calendar of offences. This was my real fall; and it was this, it has since seemed to me, which made me capable of all that followed.
I left my uncle in the office, and went back to the store in which I was employed. Between the bright vision of Miss Oliphant’s loveliness and the dark one of my own perfidy, I was nervous and uneasy all the rest of the day. What was the use of being over nice? If I did not look out for myself, no one would look out for me! I think I did not sleep an hour that night, and the next day I performed my duties mechanically. About one o’clock I was rather startled to see Tom Flynn enter the counting-room.