“Ay; why not, if you’re to get a small fortune by it.”
“But how’s that to be managed?” inquired Boone, with a look of doubt.
“Managed? Nothing easier. You’ll be so desperately upset by the fire—perhaps singed a little too—that you’ll be taken ill and won’t get better. I’ll look carefully after you as your loving friend, and when you’re about dead you’ll get up and clear off in a quiet way. I’ll make arrangements to have a corpse as like you as possible put in your bed, and then you’ll be buried comfortably, and we’ll share the insurance. Of course you’ll have to leave this part of the town and disguise yourself, but that won’t be difficult. Why, man, if you were only fond of a joke you might even attend your own funeral! It’s not the first time that sort of thing has bin done. So, then, you’ll have your life insured, but not yet. Your first business is to set about the purchase of the stock, and, let me tell you, there’s no time to lose, so I advise you to write out the orders this very night. I’ll fetch you fifty pounds in a day or two, and you’ll pay up at once. It’ll look well, you know, and after it’s all settled we’ll divide the plunder. Now then, good-night. I congratulate you on your thriving business.”
Gorman opened the door of the inner room as he said the last words, so that the lad in the shop might hear them. As he passed through the shop he whispered in his friend’s ear, “Mind the consequences if you fail,” and then left him with another hearty good-night.
Poor David Boone, having sold himself to the tempter, went about his duties like an abject slave. He began by ordering goods from various wholesale dealers in the city, after which he took occasion to stand a good deal at his shop door and accost such of his neighbours as chanced to pass. The conversation at such times invariably began with the interesting topic of the weather, on which abstruse subject Boone and his friends displayed a surprising profundity of knowledge, by stating not only what the weather was at the time being, and what it had been in time past, but what it was likely to be in time to come. It soon diverged, however, to business, and usually ended in a display of fresh goods and invoices, and in references, on the part of Boone, to the felicitous state of trade at the time.
Do what he would, however, this thriving tradesman could not act his part well. In the midst of his prosperity his smiles were ghastly and his laughter was sardonic. Even when commenting on the prosperity of trade his sighs were frequent and deep. One of his friends thought and said that prosperity was turning the poor man’s brain. Others thought that he was becoming quite unnatural and unaccountable in his deportment; and a few, acting on the principle of the sailor’s parrot, which “could not speak much, but was a tremendous thinker,” gave no outward indication of their thoughts beyond wise looks and grave shakes of the head, by which most people understood them to signify that they feared there was a screw loose somewhere.
This latter sentiment, it will be observed, is a very common one among the unusually wise ones of the earth, and is conveniently safe, inasmuch as it is more or less true of every person, place, and thing in this sad world of loose screws.