There was a silence. Dolly had said her say, and Mr. Molloy felt for the moment incapable of speech. That he had not been mistaken in supposing that his wife had a scheme at the back of her head was now plain, but, as outlined, it took his breath away. Considered purely as a scheme, he had not a word to say against it. It was commercially sound and did credit to the ingenuity of one whom he had always regarded as the slickest thinker of her sex. But it was not the sort of scheme, he considered, which ought to have emanated from the presumably innocent and unspotted daughter of a substantial Oil millionaire. It was calculated, he felt, to create in their host's mind doubts and misgivings as to the sort of people he was entertaining.
He need have no such apprehension. It was not righteous disapproval that was holding Mr. Carmody dumb.
It has been laid down by an acute thinker that there is a subtle connection between felony and fat. Almost all embezzlers, for instance, says this authority, are fat men. Whether this is or is not true, the fact remains that the sensational criminality of the suggestion just made to him awoke no horror in Mr. Carmody's ample bosom. He was startled, as any man might be who had this sort of idea sprung suddenly on him in his own garden, but he was not shocked. A youth and middle age spent on the London Stock Exchange had left Lester Carmody singularly broad-minded. He had to a remarkable degree that specious charity which allows a man to look indulgently on any financial project, however fishy, provided he can see a bit in it for himself.
"It's money for nothing," urged Dolly, misinterpreting his silence. "The stuff isn't doing any good, just lying around the way it is now. And it isn't as if it didn't really belong to you. All what you were saying awhile back about the law is simply mashed potatoes. The things belong to the house, and the house belongs to you, so where's the harm in your selling them? Who's supposed to get them after you?"
Mr. Carmody withdrew his gaze from the middle distance.
"Eh? Oh. My nephew Hugo."
"Well, you aren't worrying about him?"
Mr. Carmody was not. What he was worrying about was the practicability of the thing. Could it, he was asking himself, be put safely through without the risk, so distasteful to a man of sensibility, of landing him for a lengthy term of years in a prison cell? It was on this aspect of the matter that he now touched.
"It wouldn't be safe," he said, and few men since the world began have ever spoken more wistfully. "We would be found out."
"Not a chance. Who would find out? Who's going to say anything? You're not. I'm not. Pop's not."