AT eleven o’clock next morning, Mr. Dingwell was refreshed, and ready to receive his expected visitors. He had just finished a pipe as he heard their approaching steps upon the stairs, and Miss Sarah Rumble pushed open the door and permitted Mr. Levi and his friend to enter and announce themselves. Mr. Dingwell received them with a slight bow and a rather sarcastic smile.

Mr. Levi entered first, with his lazy smile showing his glittering fangs, and his fierce, cunning, prominent eyes swept the room, and rested on Mr. Dingwell. Putting down his hat on the middle of the narrow table, he stooped across, extending his lank arm and long hand toward the white-headed old man with the broad forehead and lean brown face, who happened to turn to the chimney-piece just then, to look for a paper, and so did not shake hands.

“And Mr. Larkin?” said Mr. Dingwell, with the same smile, as he turned about and saw that slim, bald, pink-eyed impersonation of Christianity overtopping the dark and glossy representative of the Mosaic dispensation.

“Sit down, pray — though — eh? — has my friend, Miss Rumble, left us chairs enough?” said Mr. Dingwell, looking from corner to corner.

“Quite ample; thanks, many thanks,” answered Mr. Larkin, who chose, benignantly, to take this attention to himself. “Three chairs, yes, and three of us; pray, Mr. Dingwell, don’t take any trouble.”

“Oh! thank you; but I was not thinking of taking any trouble, only I should not like to be left without a chair. Miss Sarah Rumble, I dare say she’s very virtuous, but she’s not brilliant,” he continued as he approached. “There, for instance, her pot-house habits! She leaves my old hat on the centre of the table!” and with a sudden sweep of the ebony stem of his long pipe, he knocked Mr. Levi’s hat upon the floor, and kicked it into the far corner of the room.

“Da-a-am it; that’sh my hat!” said Mr. Levi, looking after it.

“So much the better for me,” said Mr. Dingwell, with an agreeable smile and a nod.

“An error — quite a mistake,” interposed Mr. Larkin, with officious politeness. “Shall I pick it up, Mr. Levi?”

“Leave it lay,” said Mr. Levi, sulkily; “no use now. It’s got its allowance, I expect.”

“Gentlemen, you’ll not detain me longer than is necessary, if you please, because I hate business, on principle, as a Jew does ham — I beg pardon Mr. Levi, I forgot for a moment — the greatest respect for your religion, but I do hate business as I hate an attorney —‘Gad! there is my foot in it again: Mr. Larkin, no reflection, I assure you, on your excellent profession, which everyone respects. But life’s made up of hours: they’re precious, and I don’t want to spoil ’em.”

“A great trust, sir, a great trust, Mr. Dingwell, is time. Ah, sir, how little we make of it, with eternity yawning at our feet, and retribution before us!”

“Our and us; you don’t narrow it to the legal profession, Mr. Larkin?”

“I speak of time, generally, Mr. Dingwell, and of eternity and retribution as applicable to all professions,” said Mr. Larkin, sadly.

“I don’t follow you, sir. Here’s a paper, gentlemen, on which I have noted exactly what I can prove.”

“Can I have it, Mr. Dingwell?” said the attorney, whose dove-like eyes for a moment contracted with a hungry, rat-like look.

“No, I think, no,” said Mr. Dingwell, withdrawing it from the long, red fingers extended to catch the paper; Mr. Levi’s fingers, at a more modest distance, were also extended, and also disappointed; “anything I write myself I have a kind of feeling about it; I’d rather keep it to myself, or put it in the fire, than trouble the most artless Jew or religious attorney I know with the custody of it: so, if you just allow me, I’ll read it. It’s only half a dozen lines, and I don’t care if you make a note of it, Mr. Larkin.”

“Well,” he resumed, after he had glanced through the paper, Mr. Larkin sitting expectant arrectis auribus, and with a pen in his fingers, “you may say that I, Mr. Dingwell, knew the late Honourable Arthur Verney, otherwise Hakim Frank, otherwise Hakim Giaour, otherwise Mamhoud Ali Ben–Nezir, for five years and two months, and upwards — three days, I think — immediately preceding his death; for the latter four years very intimately. That I frequently procured him small loans of money, and saw him, one way or another, nearly every day of my life: that I was with him nearly twice a day during his last illness: that I was present when he expired, and was one of the three persons who saw him buried: and that I could point out his grave, if it were thought desirable to send out persons acquainted with his appearance, to disinter and identify the body.”

“No need of that, I think,” said Mr. Larkin, looking up and twiddling his eye-glass on his finger.

He glanced at Levi, who was listening intensely, and almost awfully, and, reading no sign in his face, he added —

“However, I see no harm in making the note.”

So on went Mr. Dingwell, holding a pair of gold glasses over his nose.

“I can perfectly identify him as the Hon. Arthur Verney, having transacted business for him respecting an annuity which was paid him by his family; written letters for him when his hand was affected; and read his letters for him when he was ill, which latter letters, together with a voluminous correspondence found in his box, and now in my possession, I can identify also as having been in his.”

“I don’t see any need, my dear Mr. Dingwell, of your mentioning your having written any letters for him; it has, in fact, no bearing that I can recognise upon the case. I should, in fact, apprehend complicating the case. You might find it difficult to specify, and we to produce, the particular letters referred to; so I should simply say you read them to him, at his desire, before he despatched them for England; that is, of course, assuming that you did so.”

“Very good, sir; knock it out, and put that in; and I can prove that these letters, which can easily, I suppose, be identified by the writers of them in England, were in his possession, and that several of them I can recollect his having read to me on the day he received them. That’s pretty nearly what strikes me — eh?”

“Yes, sir — certainly, Mr. Dingwell — most important; but surely he had a servant; had he not, my dear sir? — an attendant of some sort? they’re to be had there for next to nothing, I think,” hesitated Mr. Larkin.

“Certainly — so there was — yes; but he started for Egypt in a boat full of tiles, or onions, or something, a day or two after the Hakim was buried, and I’m afraid they’ll find it rather hard to find him. I think he said Egypt, but I won’t swear.”

And Mr. Dingwell laughed, very much tickled, with intense sarcastic enjoyment; so much so that Mr. Larkin, though I have seldom before or since heard of his laughing, did suddenly laugh a short, explosive laugh, as he looked down on the table, and immediately looked very grave and sad, and pinked up to the very summit of his narrow bald head; and coughing a little, he said —

“Thank you, Mr. Dingwell; this will suffice very nicely for an outline, and I can consult with our adviser as to its particular sufficiency — is not that your impression, Mr. Levi?”

“You lawyer chaps undusta-ans that line of business best; I know no more about it than watch-making — only don’t shleep over it, for it’s costing us a da-a-am lot of money,” said Mr. Levi, rising with a long yawn and a stretch, and emphasising it with a dismal oath; and shutting his great glaring eyes and shaking his head, as if he were being victimised at a pace which no capital could long stand.

“Certainly, Mr. Levi,” said the attorney, “you quite take me with you there. We are all contributing, except, perhaps, our valued friend, Mr. Dingwell, our quota towards a very exhausting expense.”

“Da-a-md exhausting,” interposed Mr. Levi.

“Well, pray allow me my own superlative,” said the attorney, with religious grandeur. “I do say it is very exhausting; though we are all, I hope, cheerfully contributing ——”

“Curse you! to be sure you are,” said Mr. Dingwell, with an abrupt profanity that startled Mr. Larkin. “Because you all expect to make money by it; and I’m contributing my time, and trouble, and danger, egad! for precisely the same reason. And now, before you go — just a moment, if you please, as we are on the subject — who’s Chancellor of the Exchequer here?”

“Who advances the necessary funds?” interpreted Mr. Larkin, with his politest smile.

“Yes,” said the old man, with a sharp menacing nod. “Which of you two comes down, as you say, with the dust? Who pays the piper for this dance of yours, gentlemen? — the Christian or the Jew? I’ve a word for the gentleman who holds the purse — or, as we Christians would say, who carries the bag;” and he glanced from one to the other with a sniff, and another rather vicious wa............