Dolly Longestaffe had found himself compelled to go to Fetter Lane immediately after that meeting in Bruton Street at which he had consented to wait two days longer for the payment of his money. This was on a Wednesday, the day appointed for the payment being Friday. He had undertaken that, on his part, Squercum should be made to desist from further immediate proceedings, and he could only carry out his word by visiting Squercum. The trouble to him was very great, but he began to feel that he almost liked it. The excitement was nearly as good as that of loo. Of course it was a ‘horrid bore,’— this having to go about in cabs under the sweltering sun of a London July day. Of course it was a ‘horrid bore,’— this doubt about his money. And it went altogether against the grain with him that he should be engaged in any matter respecting the family property in agreement with his father and Mr Bideawhile. But there was an importance in it that sustained him amidst his troubles. It is said that if you were to take a man of moderate parts and make him Prime Minister out of hand, he might probably do as well as other Prime Ministers, the greatness of the work elevating the man to its own level. In that way Dolly was elevated to the level of a man of business, and felt and enjoyed his own capacity. ‘By George!’ It depended chiefly upon him whether such a man as Melmotte should or should not be charged before the Lord Mayor. ‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have promised,’ he said to Squercum, sitting in the lawyer’s office on a high-legged stool with a cigar in his mouth. He preferred Squercum to any other lawyer he had met because Squercum’s room was untidy and homely, because there was nothing awful about it, and because he could sit in what position he pleased, and smoke all the time.
‘Well; I don’t think you ought, if you ask me,’ said Squercum.
‘You weren’t there to be asked, old fellow.’
‘Bideawhile shouldn’t have asked you to agree to anything in my absence,’ said Squercum indignantly. ‘It was a very unprofessional thing on his part, and so I shall take an opportunity of telling him.’
‘It was you told me to go.’
‘Well; — yes. I wanted you to see what they were at in that room; but I told you to look on and say nothing.’
‘I didn’t speak half-a-dozen words.’
‘You shouldn’t have spoken those words. Your father then is quite clear that you did not sign the letter?’
‘Oh, yes; — the governor is pig-headed, you know, but he’s honest.’
‘That’s a matter of course,’ said the lawyer. ‘All men are honest; but they are generally specially honest to their own side. Bideawhile’s honest; but you’ve got to fight him deuced close to prevent his getting the better of you. Melmotte has promised to pay the money on Friday, has he?’
‘He’s to bring it with him to Bruton Street.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it; — and I’m sure Bideawhile doesn’t. In what shape will he bring it? He’ll give you a cheque dated on Monday, and that’ll give him two days more, and then on Monday there’ll be a note to say the money can’t be lodged till Wednesday. There should be no compromising with such a man. You only get from one mess into another. I told you neither to do anything or to say anything.’
‘I suppose we can’t help ourselves now. You’re to be there on Friday. I particularly bargained for that. It you’re there, there won’t be any more compromising.’
Squercum made one or two further remarks to his client, not at all flattering to Dolly’s vanity — which might have caused offence had not there been such perfectly good feeling between the attorney and the young man. As it was, Dolly replied to everything that was said with increased flattery. ‘If I was a sharp fellow like you, you know,’ said Dolly, ‘of course I should get along better; but I ain’t, you know.’ It was then settled that they should meet each other, and also meet Mr Longestaffe senior, Bideawhile, and Melmotte, at twelve o’clock on Friday morning in Bruton Street.
Squercum was by no means satisfied. He had busied himself in this matter, and had ferreted things out, till he had pretty nearly got to the bottom of that affair about the houses in the East, and had managed to induce the heirs of the old man who had died to employ him. As to the Pickering property he had not a doubt on the subject. Old Longestaffe had been induced by promises of wonderful aid and by the bribe of a seat at the Board of the South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway to give up the title-deeds of the property — as far as it was in his power to give them up; and had endeavoured to induce Dolly to do so also. As he had failed, Melmotte had supplemented his work by ingenuity, with which the reader is acquainted. All this was perfectly clear to Squercum, who thought that he saw before him a most attractive course of proceeding against the Great Financier. It was pure ambition rather than any hope of lucre that urged him on. He regarded Melmotte as a grand swindler — perhaps the grandest that the world had ever known — and he could conceive no greater honour than the detection, successful prosecution, and ultimate destroying of so great a man. To have hunted down Melmotte would make Squercum as great almost as Melmotte himself. But he felt himself to have been unfairly hampered by his own client. He did not believe that the money would be paid; but delay might rob him of his Melmotte. He had heard a good many things in the City, and believed it to be quite out of the question that Melmotte should raise the money — but there were various ways in which a man might escape.
It may be remembered that Croll, the German clerk, preceded Melmotte into the City on Wednesday after Marie’s refusal to sign the deeds. He, too, had his eyes open, and had perceived that things were not looking as well as they used to look. Croll had for many years been true to his patron, having been, upon the whole, very well paid for such truth. There had been times when things had gone badly with him, but he had believed in Melmotte, and, when Melmotte rose, had been rewarded for his faith. Mr Croll at the present time had little investments of his own, not made under his employer’s auspices, which would leave him not absolutely without bread for his family should the Melmotte affairs at any time take an awkward turn. Melmotte had never required from him service that was actually fraudulent — had at any rate never required it by spoken words. Mr Croll had not been over-scrupulous, and had occasionally been very useful to Mr Melmotte. But there must be a limit to all things; and why should any man sacrifice himself beneath the ruins of a falling house — when convinced that nothing he can do can prevent the fall? Mr Croll would have been of course happy to witness Miss Melmotte’s signature; but as for that other kind of witnessing — this clearly to his thinking was not the time for such good-nature on his part.
‘You know what’s up now; — don’t you?’ said one of the junior clerks to Mr Croll when he entered the office in Abchurch Lane.
‘A good deal will be up soon,’ said the German.
‘Cohenlupe has gone!’
‘And to vere has Mr Cohenlupe gone?’
‘He hasn’t been civil enough to leave his address. I fancy he don’t want his friends to have to trouble themselves by writing to him. Nobody seems to know what’s become of him.’
‘New York,’ suggested Mr Croll.
‘They seem to think not. They’re too hospitable in New York for Mr Cohenlupe just at present. He’s travelling private. He’s on the continent somewhere — half across France by this time; but nobody knows what route he has taken. That’ll be a poke in the ribs for the old boy; — eh, Croll?’ Croll merely shook his head. ‘I wonder what has become of Miles Grendall,’ continued the clerk.
‘Ven de rats is going avay it is bad for de house. I like de rats to stay.’
‘There seems to have been a regular manufactory of Mexican Railway scrip.’
‘Our governor knew noding about dat,’ said Croll.
‘He has a hat full of them at any rate. If they could have been kept up another fortnight they say Cohenlupe would have been worth nearly a million of money, and the governor would have been as good as the bank. Is it true they are going to have him before the Lord Mayor about the Pickering title-deeds?’ Croll declared that he knew nothing about the matter, and settled himself down to his work.
In little more than two hours he was followed by Melmotte, who thus reached the City late in the afternoon. It was he knew too late to raise the money on that day, but he hoped that he might pave the way for getting it on the next day, which would be Thursday. Of course the first news which he heard was of the defection of Mr Cohenlupe. It was Croll who told him. He turned back, and his jaw fell, but at first he said nothing.
‘It’s a bad thing,’ said Mr Croll.
‘Yes; — it is bad. He had a vast amount of my property in his hands. Where has he gone?’ Croll shook his head. ‘It never rains but it pours,’ said Melmotte. ‘Well; I’ll weather it all yet. I’ve been worse than I am now, Croll, as you know, and have had a hundred thousand pounds at my banker’s — loose cash — before the month was out.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Croll.
‘But the worst of it is that every one around me is so damnably jealous. It isn’t what I’ve lost that will crush me, but what men will say that I’ve lost. Ever since I began to stand for Westminster there has been a dead set against me in the City. The whole of that affair of the dinner was planned — planned, by G— — that it might ruin me. It was all laid out just as you would lay the foundation of a building. It is hard for one man to stand against all that when he has dealings so large as mine.’
‘Very hard, Mr Melmotte.’
‘But they’ll find they’re mistaken yet. There’s too much of the real stuff, Croll, for them to crush me. Property’s a kind of thing that comes out right at last. It’s cut and come again, you know, if the stuff is really there. But I mustn’t stop talking here. I suppose I shall find Brehgert in Cuthbert’s Court.’
‘I should say so, Mr Melmotte. Mr Brehgert never leaves much before six.’
Then Mr Melmotte took his hat and gloves, and the stick that he usually carried, and went out with his face carefully dressed in its usually jaunty air. But Croll as he went heard him mutter the name of Cohenlupe between his teeth. The part which he had to act is one very difficult to any actor. The carrying an external look of indifference when the heart is sinking within — or has sunk almost to the very ground — is more than difficult; it is an agonizing task. In all mental suffering the sufferer longs for solitude — for permission to cast himself loose along the ground, so that every limb and every feature of his person may faint in sympathy with his heart. A grandly urbane deportment over a crushed spirit and ruined hopes is beyond the physical strength of most men; — but there have been men so strong. Melmotte very nearly accomplished it. It was only to the eyes of such a one as Herr Croll that the failure was perceptible.
Melmotte did find Mr Brehgert. At this time Mr Brehgert had completed his correspondence with Miss Longestaffe, in which he had mentioned the probability of great losses from the anticipated commercial failure in Mr Melmotte’s affairs. He had now heard that Mr Cohenlupe had gone upon his travels, and was therefore nearly sure that his anticipation would be correct. Nevertheless, he received his old friend with a smile. When large sums of money are concerned there is seldom much of personal indignation between man and man. The loss of fifty pounds or of a few hundreds may create personal wrath; — but fifty thousand require equanimity. ‘So Cohenlupe hasn’t been seen in the City to-day,’ said Brehgert.
‘He has gone,’ said Melmotte hoarsely.
‘I think I once told you that Cohe............