It took Todd, master as he was, or used to be, in the art of dissimulation, some few minutes to recover his composure, after the officer had left the shop, and during that time, the gentleman from Fogg's looked at him with the quiet sniggering kind of laugh so peculiar to him. Todd was evidently, day by day, losing that amount of nerve which had at one time formed his principal characteristic. It was getting, in fact, clear to himself that he was not near so well fitted for the business he was carrying on as he had been. Turning to the man from Fogg's, he said, while he put on as bland a smile as he could— "Well, my friend, I suppose you have sought me with some motive? Pray speak out, and tell me what it is."
The man laughed.
"I have had a row with Fogg," he said, "and we parted in anger. I told him I would split upon the den, but he is a deep one, and he only coughed. Fogg, though, somehow don't laugh as he used. However, as well as he could laugh, he did, and, says he, 'Peter, my lad,' says he, 'if you do split upon the old den, I'll get you transported, as safe as you think yourself.'"
"Well?"
"Well. I—I—didn't like that."
"Then you are probably," said Todd in a bland manner—"you are probably aware that you may be obnoxious to the law."
"A few!" said the fellow.
"And what followed?"
"'Why, Peter,' added Fogg, 'you may leave me if you like, and once a month there will be a couple of guineas here for you. There's the door, so away, I insist;' and it has struck me, that if Fogg gives me a couple of shiners a month to hold my tongue, other gentlemen might do as much, and through one and another, I might pick up a crust and something to moisten it with."
The man laughed again. Todd nodded his head, as much as to say—"You could not have explained yourself clearer," and then he said—
"Peter, in your way you have a certain sort of genius. I might just remark, however, that after paying Fogg handsomely for what he has done, it is rather hard that Fogg's cast-off officials should come upon Fogg's best customers, and threaten them out of any more."
"I know it's hard," said the man.
"Then why do you do it?"
"Because, to my thinking, it would be a deuced sight harder for me to want anything; and besides, I might get into trouble, and be in the hands of the police, when who knows but that in some soft moment some one might get hold of me, and get it all out of me. Wouldn't that be harder still for all?"
"It would."
"Ah! Mr. Todd, I always thought you were a man of judgment, that I did."
"You do me infinite honour."
"Not at all. I say what I think, you may take your oath of that. But when I saw you come about that last boy, I said to myself—'Mr. Todd is carrying on some nice game, but what it is I don't know. Howsomdever he is a man with something more than would go into a small tea-spoon here-abouts.'"
Mr. Peter tapped his forehead with his finger as he spoke, to intimate that he alluded to the intellectual capacity of Todd.
"You are very obliging," said Todd.
"Not at all. Not at all. How much will you stand, now?"
"I suppose, if I say the same as Mr. Fogg, you will be satisfied, Mr. Peter. Times are very bad, you know."
Peter laughed again.
"No, no! Mr. Todd, times are not very bad, but I do think what you say is very fair, and that if you stand the same as Fogg, I ought not to say one word against it."
"How charming it is," said Todd, casting his eyes up to the ceiling, as though communing with himself or some higher intelligence supposed to be in that direction. "How charming it is to feel that you are at any time transacting business with one who is so very obliging and so very reasonable."
Somehow Peter winced a little before the look of Todd. The barber had come into his proposal a little too readily. It almost looked as though he saw his way too clearly out of it again. If he had declaimed loudly, and made a great fuss about the matter, Mr. Peter would have been better pleased, but as it was he felt, he scarcely knew why, wonderfully fidgetty.
"That boy," he said, "to change the conversation. That boy, used to say some odd things of you, Mr. Todd."
"Insanity," said Todd, "is a great calamity."
"Oh, very."
"And so clouds the faculties, that the poor boy no doubt said things of me, his best friend, that, if he had been restored to reason, he would have heard spoken of with a smile of incredulity."
"Ha! ha! By th............