Nothing could well be more unlike what, during the regency of the late King George IV., was called a buck than was Mr Braham, who was simply a corpulent Jew, ineffably greasy in appearance, and who wore a faded olive-green greatcoat that might have passed for a medieval gabardine, and carried an empty blue bag over his left arm. Mr Moss, his junior by some years, was better dressed, but his raven locks fell upon a shirt collar of dubious whiteness, and his dingy finger-nails were in unpleasant contrast with the splendour of the heavy rings he wore, and of the huge emerald in his satin necktie. The youngest of the three, Mr Isaacs, a hawk-eyed little man, bejewelled and florid of attire, was by far in dress and person the least unclean of the three.
There was a little conversation as to weather and other general topics, and then Braham the senior of the three Hebrews pulled out a watch as round and almost as big as a golden turnip, and compared it with the office clock. ‘Letsh get along,’ he said genially: ‘bushinesh, bushinesh, my dears, waitsh for no man.’
‘You’re right, Uncle Jacob,’ chimed in Mr Moss, who could scarcely have been, otherwise than figuratively and in oriental fashion, the nephew of his stout kinsman, but who was certainly a Jew of a much more modern pattern. He, at anyrate, coquetted with soap and water, and had discarded the shibboleth in his speech; but it might be doubted whether the elder Israelite, for all his repellent exterior, was not the better fellow of the two.
‘Business by all means,’ cheerily responded Mr Wilkins. ‘We’ve done it together before to-day, and we’ll do it again, I hope, gentlemen, for many a day yet to come. It is a very pleasant occasion on which we now assemble—nothing less, if I may say so, than the dividing of the profits, the sharing of the spoil.’
There was a hearty laugh.
‘Sharing of the shpoil!’ chuckled elderly but still vigorous Mr Braham. ‘What a boy he ish, thish Wilkinsh, what a boy he ish!’
‘And now for it,’ said Mr Wilkins, rustling over a bundle of papers that lay before him. ‘Here we have it in black and white, worth all the patter and palaver in the world. These are the baronet’s first and second letters, the second inclosing an uncommonly stiff cheque. Here are Captain Denzil’s bills—pretty bits of kites they are, renewed here and renewed there—and here are our old agreements, notes, and memoranda, duplicates of which I’ve no doubt are in all your pockets. Pass them round, Isaacs, and take a good look at them first. You’re an attorney, you know, and that’s why you’re here, though I don’t believe, my friend, that you “pull off” a clear five hundred out of the haul.’
‘Yesh, yesh, he’sh an attorney, ash Wilkinsh saysh,’ said Mr Braham, whose laughter was very ready, as that of fat people often is; ‘and sho we have him here. Shet a thief to catch a’——
Here a warning kick or other practical exhortation to caution on the part of his kinsman appeared to cut short the over-fluency of the bulky Hebrew, and he became as mute as a mouse, while Mr Isaacs read aloud in a high shrill voice the contents of Sir Sykes Denzil’s letters and also a brief summary which Mr Wilkins had prepared.
There was some discussion, but there really was not room for much. Here was no compromise, no handing over of so many shillings in the pound. Sir Sykes Denzil had paid his son’s liabilities without the abatement of a guinea. Mr Braham was to receive what he called ‘shix thoushand odd;’ Mr Moss, two thousand eight hundred and seventy-two; four hundred and thirty were for Mr Isaacs; and the residue was for Enoch Wilkins, Esquire, gentleman.