“But—but what if proceedings have already commenced, and my lawyer is prepared to put in that deed to bar the claim they will make?”
“But he musn’t.”
“But what if he has this very day? for I urged him to proceed with all speed.”
“Well, then we must be prepared to prove that it is Wilton’s signature.”
“That it is his?”
“’Zackly. I don’t want more in this affair than ourselves, but we musn’t be beat while there is a chance of winning. Suppose I swears I saw him sign the deed, and suppose old Jukes swears he saw him do it, and suppose his follerers, Sudds and dirty Nutty, swears they stood by, and saw it signed—how then? There’s nothing can be brought against us to invalidate our evidence, and what could the hother side do then? Old Wilton will swear, of course, hard and fast, that he did not sign, but what then?—you don’t appear in the matter? you commissioned me to get it signed, and I brings forard three respectable men, who swears—swears, mind—they saw him sign it; who’ll be believed then? he wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. These men will be difficult to get, but they’ve got their price, sir, and are to be had.”
All these remarks and suggestions, rascally as they were, afforded comfort to Mr. Grahame. They conveyed to him a glimmering of hope that the difficulty, after all, was not so desperate as he had presumed it to be. He recoiled at the notion of having to work with such dirty instruments—when, however, did dishonesty and crime ever work with other tools?—but he did not recoil at the work itself.
To obtain a vast advantage, at the price of the misery and destruction of another, would not have occasioned him a moment’s remorse, or in any degree have ruffled his equanimity or serenity, but to accomplish that task by the aid of a small knot of low rascals, was the source of extreme annoyance and vexation to him. Still if the object could not be obtained without such assistance, he elected to employ it rather than forego his purpose; they were the means to the end at which he sought to arrive, disagreeable enough, but necessary to the result—and, as such, accepted.
The alternative of stoutly maintaining the forged signature of Wilton to be genuine, had not struck him. The suggestion was a valuable one, and he resolved to treasure it up. It occurred to him that his own word would have weight in a Court of Justice, from the high position which he held in society, and if he repudiated having had anything to do with the signature, or of having been present when it was being signed—he would in all probability be believed, not alone because it would seem the natural course for him, wanting the signature, to have pursued to obtain it, but because it would be considered incredible that he had descended to any unworthy artifice or to crime even, to have possessed himself of it. Its return to his own possession was, however, of the first importance; its destruction would raise another question, to be settled hereafter. So he sat down, and penned the letter to his solicitor, the outlines of which Chewkle had supplied.
As he completed it, and inclosed it in an envelope, he said to Chewkle—