“Then, maybe, we’ll save him and make him galley-slave, the foul-mouthed devil.”
When the report spread round the neighbourhood that Inman was the purchaser that astute individual only stared. Once, when he was directly challenged, he replied that he didn’t discuss business matters except with principals, and added:
“Lies are as thick on the ground as weeds. He’s a fool who wastes his time stubbing ’em up!”
“Doesn’t Baldwin guess?” Nancy asked, when he was relating this encounter.
“All Baldwin does is to curse to all eternity those who’ve bought at half value,” laughed her husband. “There’s no wonder you look worn and withered, Nancy!—he’s blasted you! Let him guess! Let ’em all guess! Priestley’s a safe lawyer, and’ll give naught away.”
This was only one move in the game and a legitimate one; there were others, more devilish, that required a clear head, infinite patience and the unscrupulous use of means which Inman judged it prudent to conceal from Nancy’s eyes. Every evening when the men had gone Baldwin and Inman would return to the office and discuss the situation out of earshot of the women. On one of the earliest of these occasions Inman had produced from a cupboard of which he had been given the key a bottle of whisky and a single tumbler.
“You don’t touch this stuff?” he said. “You were a wise man not to begin it, for it’s a habit ’at isn’t easy dropped. I wish I could do without it; but I’ve always found in my case that a drop of whisky’s a help when I’m hard pushed, and gingers me up a bit. I don’t recommend it, mind you, all the same, to them that aren’t used to it.”
He was mixing himself a glass as he spoke, with a veiled eye on his master who looked as if he was going to forbid the indulgence. Inman, however, took no notice.
“A cup of coffee or a bottle o’ bitters might get you to the same place in time,” he said; “but this lands you there quicker, and time’s money just now. It gives your brain a spurt and comforts your heart, I find; but those who haven’t begun it had better keep off it.”
He turned a deaf ear to Baldwin’s mutterings, and from that moment showed himself unusually resourceful. No actor on the stage of a crowded theatre who was drawing the plaudits of his audience that night was playing his part more admirably than Inman to this company of one. He had no great liking for spirits, and he was on ordinary occasions studiously abstemious; but he could drink hard on occasion and be little the worse for it, and he counted on this capability now, when he had an object in view—the object of guiding a pair of unaccustomed feet into the perilous groves of Bacchus.