'To be sure!' cried Morris; 'it was badly smashed, I know. How stupid
not to think of that! Why, then, all's clear; and, my dear Michael, I'll
tell you what--we're saved, both saved. You get the tontine--I don't
grudge it you the least--and I get the leather business, which is really
beginning to look up. Declare the death at once, don't mind me in the
smallest, don't consider me; declare the death, and we're all right.'

'Ah, but I can't declare it,' said Michael.

'Why not?' cried Morris.

'I can't produce the corpus, Morris. I've lost it,' said the lawyer.

'Stop a bit,' ejaculated the leather merchant. 'How is this? It's not
possible. I lost it.'

'Well, I've lost it too, my son,' said Michael, with extreme serenity.
'Not recognizing it, you see, and suspecting something irregular in its
origin, I got rid of--what shall we say?--got rid of the proceeds at
once.'

'You got rid of the body? What made you do that?' walled Morris. 'But
you can get it again? You know where it is?'

'I wish I did, Morris, and you may believe me there, for it would be a
small sum in my pocket; but the fact is, I don't,' said Michael.

'Good Lord,' said Morris, addressing heaven and earth, 'good Lord, I've
lost the leather business!'

Michael was once more shaken with laughter.

'Why do you laugh, you fool?' cried his cousin, 'you lose more than I.
You've bungled it worse than even I did. If you had a spark of feeling,
you would be shaking in your boots with vexation. But I'll tell you one
thing--I'll have that eight hundred pound--I'll have that and go to Swan
River--that's mine, anyway, and your friend must have forged to cash it.
Give me the eight hundred, here, upon this platform, or I go straight to
Scotland Yard and turn the whole disreputable story inside out.'

'Morris,' said Michael, laying his hand upon his shoulder, 'hear reason.
It wasn't us, it was the other man. We never even searched the body.'

'The other man?' repeated Morris.

'Yes, the other man. We palmed Uncle Joseph off upon another man,' said
Michael.

'You what? You palmed him off? That's surely a singular expression,'
said Morris.

'Yes, palmed him off for a piano,' said Michael with perfect simplicity.
'Remarkably full, rich tone,' he added.

Morris carried his hand to his brow and looked at it; it was wet with
sweat. 'Fever,' said he.

'No, it was a Broadwood grand,' said Michael. 'Pitman here will tell you
if it was genuine or not.'

'Eh? O! O yes, I believe it was a genuine Broadwood; I have played upon
it several times myself,' said Pitman. 'The three-letter E was broken.'

'Don't say anything more about pianos,' said Morris, with a strong
shudder; 'I'm not the man I used to be! This--this other man--let's come
to him, if I can only manage to follow. Who is he? Where can I get hold
of him?'

'Ah, that's the rub,' said Michael. 'He's been in possession of the
desired article, let me see--since Wednesday, about four o'clock, and is
now, I should imagine, on his way to the isles of Javan and Gadire.'

'Michael,' said Morris pleadingly, 'I am in a very weak state, and I beg
your consideration for a kinsman. Say it slowly again, and be sure you
are correct. When did he get it?'

Michael repeated his statement.

'Yes, that's the worst thing yet,' said Morris, drawing in his breath.

'What is?' asked the lawyer.

'Even the dates are sheer nonsense,' said the leather merchant.

'The bill was cashed on Tuesday. There's not a gleam of reason in the
whole transaction.'

A young gentleman, who had passed the trio and suddenly started and
turned back, at this moment laid a heavy hand on Michael's shoulder.

'Aha! so this is Mr Dickson?' said he.

The trump of judgement could scarce have rung with a more dreadful note
in the ears of Pitman and the lawyer. To Morris this erroneous name
seemed a legitimate enough continuation of the nightmare in which he
had so long been wandering. And when Michael, with his brand-new bushy
whiskers, broke from the grasp of the stranger and turned to run, and
the weird little shaven creature in the low-necked shirt followed his
example with a bird-like screech, and the stranger (finding the rest of
his prey escape him) pounced with a rude grasp on Morris himself,
that gentleman's frame of mind might be very nearly expressed in the
colloquial phrase: 'I told you so!'

'I have one of the gang,' said Gideon Forsyth.

'I do not understand,' said Morris dully.

'O, I will make you understand,' returned Gideon grimly.

'You will be a good friend to me if you can make me understand
anything,' cried Morris, with a sudden energy of conviction.

'I don't know you personally, do I?' continued Gideon, examining his
unresisting prisoner. 'Never mind, I know your friends. They are your
friends, are they not?'

'I do not understand you,' said Morris.

'You had possibly something to do with a piano?' suggested Gideon.

'A piano!' cried Morris, convulsively clasping Gideon by the arm. 'Then
you're the other man! Where is it? Where is the body? And did you cash
the draft?'

'Where is the body? This is very strange,' mused Gideon. 'Do you want
the body?'

'Want it?' cried Morris. 'My whole fortune depends upon it! I lost it.
Where is it? Take me to it?

'O, you want it, do you? And the other man, Dickson--does he want it?'
enquired Gideon.

'Who do you mean by Dickson? O, Michael Finsbury! Why, of course he
does! He lost it too. If he had it, he'd have won the tontine tomorrow.'

'Michael Finsbury! Not the solicitor?' cried Gideon. 'Yes, the
solicitor,' said Morris. 'But where is the body?'

'Then that is why he sent the brief! What is Mr Finsbury's private
address?' asked Gideon.

'233 King's Road. What brief? Where are you going? Where is the body?'
cried Morris, clinging to Gideon's arm.

'I have lost it myself,' returned Gideon, and ran out of the station.



CHAPTER XV. The Return of the Great Vance

Morris returned from Waterloo in a frame of mind that baffles
description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening
notion of his own powers; he knew himself unfit to write a book, turn a
table napkin-ring, entertain a Christmas party with legerdemain--grapple
(in short) any of those conspicuous accomplishments that are usually
classed under the head of genius. He knew--he admitted--his parts to be
pedestrian, but he had considered them (until quite lately) fully equal
to the demands of life. And today he owned himself defeated: life had
the upper hand; if there had been any means of flight or place to flee
to, if the world had been so ordered that a man could leave it like a
place of entertainment, Morris would have instantly resigned all further
claim on its rewards and pleasures, and, with inexpressible contentment,
ceased to be. As it was, one aim shone before him: he could get home.
Even as the sick dog crawls under the sofa, Morris could shut the door
of John Street and be alone.

The dusk was falling when he drew near this place of refuge; and the
first thing that met his eyes was the figure of a man upon the step,
alternately plucking at the bell-handle and pounding on the panels. The
man had no hat, his clothes were hideous with filth, he had the air of a
hop-picker. Yet Morris knew him; it was John.

The first impulse of flight was succeeded, in the elder brother's
bosom, by the empty quiescence of despair. 'What does it matter now?' he
thought, and drawing forth his latchkey ascended the steps.

John turned about; his face was ghastly with weariness and dirt and
fury; and as he recognized the head of his family, he drew in a long
rasping breath, and his eyes glittered.

'Open that door,' he said, standing back.

'I am going to,' said Morris, and added mentally, 'He looks like
murder!'

The brothers passed into the hall, the door closed behind them; and
suddenly John seized Morris by the shoulders and shook him as a terrier
shakes a rat. 'You mangy little cad,' he said, 'I'd serve you right to
smash your skull!' And shook him again, so that his teeth rattled and
his head smote upon the wall.

'Don't be violent, Johnny,' said Morris. 'It can't do any good now.'

'Shut your mouth,' said John, 'your time's come to listen.'

He strode into the dining-room, fell into the easy-chair, and taking off
one of his burst walking-shoes, nursed for a while his foot like one in
agony. 'I'm lame for life,' he said. 'What is there for dinner?'

'Nothing, Johnny,' said Morris.

'Nothing? What do you mean by that?' enquired the Great Vance. 'Don't
set up your chat to me!'

'I mean simply nothing,' said his brother. 'I have nothing to eat, and
nothing to buy it with. I've only had a cup of tea and a sandwich all
this day myself.'

'Only a sandwich?' sneered Vance. 'I suppose YOU'RE going to complain
next. But you had better take care: I've had all I mean to take; and
I can tell you what it is, I mean to dine and to dine well. Take your
signets and sell them.'

'I can't today,' objected Morris; 'it's Sunday.'

'I tell you I'm going to dine!' cried the younger brother.

'But if it's not possible, Johnny?' pleaded the other.

'You nincompoop!' cried Vance. 'Ain't we householders? Don't they know
us at that hotel where Uncle Parker used to come. Be off with you; and
if you ain't back in half an hour, and if the dinner ain't good, first
I'll lick you till you don't want to breathe, and then I'll go straight
to the police and blow the gaff. Do you understand that, Morris
Finsbury? Because if you do, you had better jump.'

The idea smiled even upon the wretched Morris, who was sick with famine.
He sped upon his errand, and returned to find John still nursing his
foot in the armchair.

'What would you like to drink, Johnny?' he enquired soothingly.

'Fizz,' said John. 'Some of the poppy stuff from the end bin; a bottle
of the old port that Michael liked, to follow; and see and don't shake
the port. And look here, light the fire--and the gas, and draw down the
blinds; it's cold and it's getting dark. And then you can lay the cloth.
And, I say--here, you! bring me down some clothes.'

The room looked comparatively habitable by the time the dinner came; and
the dinner itself was good: strong gravy soup, fillets of sole, mutton
chops and tomato sauce, roast beef done rare with roast potatoes,
cabinet pudding, a piece of Chester cheese, and some early celery: a
meal uncompromisingly British, but supporting.

'Thank God!' said John, his nostrils sniffing wide, surprised by joy
into the unwonted formality of grace. 'Now I'm going to take this chair
with my back to the fire--there's been a strong frost these two last
nights, and I can't get it out of my bones; the celery will be just the
ticket--I'm going to sit here, and you are going to stand there, Morris
Finsbury, and play butler.'

'But, Johnny, I'm so hungry myself,' pleaded Morris.

'You can have what I leave,' said Vance. 'You're just beginning to
pay your score, my daisy; I owe you one-pound-ten; don't you rouse the
British lion!' There was something indescribably menacing in the face
and voice of the Great Vance as he uttered these words, at which the
soul of Morris withered. 'There!' resumed the feaster, 'give us a glass
of the fizz to start with. Gravy soup! And I thought I didn't like gravy
soup! Do you know how I got here?' he asked, with another explosion of
wrath.

'No, Johnny; how could I?' said the obsequious Morris.

'I walked on my ten toes!' cried John; 'tramped the whole way from
Browndean; and begged! I would like to see you beg. It's not so easy
as you might suppose. I played it on being a shipwrecked mariner from
Blyth; I don't know where Blyth is, do you? but I thought it sounded
natural. I begged from a little beast of a schoolboy, and he forked out
a bit of twine, and asked me to make a clove hitch; I did, too, I know I
did, but he said it wasn't, he said it was a granny's knot, and I was a
what-d'ye-call-'em, and he would give me in charge. Then I begged from
a naval officer--he never bothered me with knots, but he only gave me
a tract; there's a nice account of the British navy!--and then from a
widow woman that sold lollipops, and I got a hunch of bread from her.
Another party I fell in with said you could generally always get bread;
and the thing to do was to break a plateglass window and get into gaol;
seemed rather a brilliant scheme. Pass the beef.'

'Why didn't you stay at Browndean?' Morris ventured to enquire.

'Skittles!' said John. 'On what? The Pink Un and a measly religious
paper? I had to leave Browndean; I had to, I tell you. I got tick at
a public, and set up to be the Great Vance; so would you, if you were
leading such a beastly existence! And a card stood me a lot of ale and
stuff, and we got swipey, talking about music-halls and the piles of tin
I got for singing; and then they got me on to sing "Around her splendid
form I weaved the magic circle," and then he said I couldn't be Vance,
and I stuck to it like grim death I was. It was rot of me to sing, of
course, but I thought I could brazen it out with a set of yokels. It
settled my hash at the public,' said John, with a sigh. 'And then the
last thing was the carpenter--'

'Our landlord?' enquired Morris.

'That's the party,' said John. 'He came nosing about the place, and then
wanted to know where the water-butt was, and the bedclothes. I told him
to go to the devil; so would you too, when there was no possible thing
to say! And then he said I had pawned them, and did I know it was
felony? Then I made a pretty neat stroke. I remembered he was deaf, and
talked a whole lot of rot, very politely, just so low he couldn't hear
a word. "I don't hear you," says he. "I know you don't, my buck, and I
don't mean you to," says I, smiling away like a haberdasher. "I'm hard
of hearing," he roars. "I'd be in a pretty hot corner if you weren't,"
says I, making signs as if I was explaining everything. It was tip-top
as long as it lasted. "Well," he said, "I'm deaf, worse luck, but I
bet the constable can hear you." And off he started one way, and I the
other. They got a spirit-lamp and the Pink Un, and that old religious
paper, and another periodical you sent me. I think you must have been
drunk--it had a name like one of those spots that Uncle Joseph used to
hold forth at, and it was all full of the most awful swipes about poetry
and the use of the globes. It was the kind of thing that nobody could
read out of a lunatic asylum. The Athaeneum, that was the name! Golly,
what a paper!'

'Athenaeum, you mean,' said Morris.

'I don't care what you call it,' said John, 'so as I don't require to
take it in! There, I feel better. Now I'm going to sit by the fire in
the easy-chair; pass me the cheese, and the celery, and the bottle of
port--no, a champagne glass, it holds more. And now you can pitch in;
there's some of the fish left and a chop, and some fizz. Ah,' sighed the
refreshed pedestrian, 'Michael was right about that port; there's old
and vatted for you! Michael's a man I like; he's clever and reads books,
and the Athaeneum, and all that; but he's not dreary to meet, he don't
talk Athaeneum like the other parties; why, the most of them would throw
a blight over a skittle alley! Talking of Michael, I ain't bored myself
to put the question, because of course I knew it from the first. You've
made a hash of it, eh?'

'Michael made a hash of it,' said Morris, flushing dark.

'What have we got to do with that?' enquired John.

'He has lost the body, that's what we have to do with it,' cried Morris.
'He has lost the body, and the death can't be established.'

'Hold on,' said John. 'I thought you didn't want to?'

'O, we're far past that,' said his brother. 'It's not the tontine now,
it's the leather business, Johnny; it's the clothes upon our back.'

'Stow the slow music,' said John, 'and tell your story from beginning to
end.' Morris did as he was bid.

'Well, now, what did I tell you?' cried the Great Vance, when the other
had done. 'But I know one thing: I'm not going to be humbugged out of my
property.'

'I should like to know what you mean to do,' said Morris.

'I'll tell you that,' responded John with extreme decision. 'I'm going
to put my interests in the hands of the smartest lawyer in London; and
whether you go to quod or not is a matter of indifference to me.'

'Why, Johnny, we're in the same boat!' expostulated Morris.

'Are we?' cried his brother. 'I bet we're not! Have I committed forgery?
have I lied about Uncle Joseph? have I put idiotic advertisements in the
comic papers? have I smashed other people's statues? I like your cheek,
Morris Finsbury. No, I've let you run my affairs too long; now they
shall go to Michael. I like Michael, anyway; and it's time I understood
my situation.'

At this moment the brethren were interrupted by a ring at the bell,
and Morris, going timorously to the door, received from the hands of a
commissionaire a letter addressed in the hand of Michael. Its contents
ran as follows:

MORRIS FINSBURY, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of
SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE at my office, in Chancery Lane, at 10 A.M.
tomorrow.

MICHAEL FINSBURY


So utter was Morris's subjection that he did not wait to be asked, but
handed the note to John as soon as he had glanced at it himself.

'That's the way to write a letter,' cried John. 'Nobody but Michael
could have written that.'

And Morris did not even claim the credit of priority.



CHAPTER XVI. Final Adjustment of the Leather Business

Finsbury brothers were ushered, at ten the next morning, into a large
apartment in Michael's office; the Great Vance, somewhat restored from
yesterday's exhaustion, but with one foot in a slipper; Morris, not
positively damaged, but a man ten years older than he who had left
Bournemouth eight days before, his face ploughed full of anxious
wrinkles, his dark hair liberally grizzled at the temples.

Three persons were seated at a table to receive them: Michael in
the midst, Gideon Forsyth on his right hand, on his left an ancient
gentleman with spectacles and silver hair. 'By Jingo, it's Uncle Joe!'
cried John.

But Morris approached his uncle with a pale countenance and glittering
eyes.

'I'll tell you what you did!' he cried. 'You absconded!'

'Good morning, Morris Finsbury,' returned Joseph, with no less asperity;
'you are looking seriously ill.'

'No use making trouble now,' remarked Michael. 'Look the facts in the
face. Your uncle, as you see, was not so much as shaken in the accident;
a man of your humane disposition ought to be delighted.'

'Then, if that's so,' Morris broke forth, 'how about the body? You don't
mean to insinuate that thing I schemed and sweated for, and colported
with my own hands, was the body of a total stranger?'

'O no, we can't go as far as that,' said Michael soothingly; 'you may
have met him at the club.'

Morris fell into a chair. 'I would have found it out if it had come to
the house,' he complained. 'And why didn't it? why did it go to Pitman?
what right had Pitman to open it?'

'If you come to that, Morris, what have you done with the colossal
Hercules?' asked Michael.

'He went through it with the meat-axe,' said John. 'It's all in
spillikins in the back garden.'

'Well, there's one thing,' snapped Morris; 'there's my uncle again, my
fraudulent trustee. He's mine, anyway. And the tontine too. I claim the
tontine; I claim it now. I believe Uncle Masterman's dead.'

'I must put a stop to this nonsense,' said Michael, 'and that for ever.
You say too near the truth. In one sense your uncle is dead, and has
been so long; but not in the sense of the tontine, which it is even on
the cards he may yet live to win. Uncle Joseph saw him this morning; he
will tell you he still lives, but his mind is in abeyance.'

'He did not know me,' said Joseph; to do him justice, not without
emotion.

'So you're out again there, Morris,' said John. 'My eye! what a fool
you've made of yourself!'

'And that was why you wouldn't compromise,' said Morris.

'As for the absurd position in which you and Uncle Joseph have been
making yourselves an exhibition,' resumed Michael, 'it is more than time
it came to an end. I have prepared a proper discharge in full, which you
shall sign as a preliminary.'

'What?' cried Morris, 'and lose my seven thousand eight hundred pounds,
and the leather business, and the contingent interest, and get nothing?
Thank you.'

'It's like you to feel gratitude, Morris,' began Michael.

'O, I know it's no good appealing to you, you sneering devil!' cried
Morris. 'But there's a stranger present, I can't think why, and I appeal
to him. I was robbed of that money when I was an orphan, a mere child,
at a commercial academy. Since then, I've never had a wish but to get
back my own. You may hear a lot of stuff about me; and there's no doubt
at times I have been ill-advised. But it's the pathos of my situation;
that's what I want to show you.'

'Morris,' interrupted Michael, 'I do wish you would let me add one
point, for I think it will affect your judgement. It's pathetic too
since that's your taste in literature.'

'Well, what is it?' said Morris.

'It's only the name of one of the persons who's to witness your
signature, Morris,' replied Michael. 'His name's Moss, my dear.'

There was a long silence. 'I might have been sure it was you!' cried
Morris.

'You'll sign, won't you?' said Michael.

'Do you know what you're doing?' cried Morris. 'You're compounding a
felony.'

'Very well, then, we won't compound it, Morris,' returned Michael. 'See
how little I understood the sterling integrity of your character! I
thought you would prefer it so.'

'Look here, Michael,' said John, 'this is all very fine and large; but
how about me? Morris is gone up, I see that; but I'm not. And I was
robbed, too, mind you; and just as much an orphan, and at the blessed
same academy as himself.'

'Johnny,' said Michael, 'don't you think you'd better leave it to me?'

'I'm your man,' said John. 'You wouldn't deceive a poor orphan, I'll
take my oath. Morris, you sign that document, or I'll start in and
astonish your weak mind.'

With a sudden alacrity, Morris proffered his willingness. Clerks were
brought in, the discharge was executed, and there was Joseph a free man
once more.

'And now,' said Michael, 'hear what I propose to do. Here, John
and Morris, is the leather business made over to the pair of you in
partnership. I have valued it at the lowest possible figure, Pogram and
Jarris's. And here is a cheque for the balance of your fortune. Now, you
see, Morris, you start fresh from the commercial academy; and, as you
said yourself the leather business was looking up, I suppose you'll
probably marry before long. Here's your marriage present--from a Mr
Moss.'

Morris bounded on his cheque with a crimsoned countenance.

'I don't understand the performance,' remarked John. 'It seems too good
to be true.'

'It's simply a readjustment,' Michael explained. 'I take up Uncle
Joseph's liabilities; and if he gets the tontine, it's to be mine; if
my father gets it, it's mine anyway, you see. So that I'm rather
advantageously placed.'

'Morris, my unconverted friend, you've got left,' was John's comment.

'And now, Mr Forsyth,' resumed Michael, turning to his silent guest,
'here are all the criminals before you, except Pitman. I really didn't
like to interrupt his scholastic career; but you can have him arrested
at the seminary--I know his hours. Here we are then; we're not pretty to
look at: what do you propose to do with us?'

'Nothing in the world, Mr Finsbury,' returned Gideon. 'I seem to
understand that this gentleman'---indicating Morris--'is the fons et
origo of the trouble; and, from what I gather, he has already paid
through the nose. And really, to be quite frank, I do not see who is to
gain by any scandal; not me, at least. And besides, I have to thank you
for that brief.'

Michael blushed. 'It was the least I could do to let you have some
business,' he said. 'But there's one thing more. I don't want you to
misjudge poor Pitman, who is the most harmless being upon earth. I
wish you would dine with me tonight, and see the creature on his native
heath--say at Verrey's?'

'I have no engagement, Mr Finsbury,' replied Gideon. 'I shall be
delighted. But subject to your judgement, can we do nothing for the man
in the cart? I have qualms of conscience.'

'Nothing but sympathize,' said Michael.