In a miserable den, an hour or so before--there are miserable dens evenin Baden, that gold-decked rendezvous of princes, where crowned headsare numberless as couriers, and great ministers must sometimes becontent with a shakedown--two men sat in consultation. Though thechamber was poor and dark, their table was loaded with various expensivewines and liqueurs. Of a truth they were flush of money, and selectedthis poor place from motives of concealment rather than of necessity.One of them was the "welsher," Ben Davis; the other, a smaller, quieterman, with a keen, vivacious Hebrew eye and an olive-tinted skin, aJew, Ezra Baroni. The Jew was cool, sharp, and generally silent; the"welsher," heated, eager, flushed with triumph, and glowing with agloating malignity. Excitement and the fire of very strong wines,of whose vintage brandy formed a large part, had made him voluble inexultation; the monosyllabic sententiousness that had characterized himin the loose-box at Royallieu had been dissipated under the ardor ofsuccess; and Ben Davis, with his legs on the table, a pipe between histeeth, and his bloated face purple with a brutal contentment, might havefurnished to a Teniers the personification of culminated cunning and ofdelighted tyranny.
"That precious Guards' swell!" he muttered gloatingly, for the hundredthtime. "I've paid him out at last! He won't take a 'walk over' again ina hurry. Cuss them swells! They allays die so game; it ain't half a goafter all, giving 'em a facer; they just come up to time so cool underit all, and never show they are down, even when their backers throw upthe sponge. You can't make 'em give in, not even when they're mortalhit; that's the crusher of it."
"Vell, vhat matter that ven you have hit 'em?" expostulated the morephilosophic Jew.
"Why, it is a fleecing of one," retorted the welsher savagely, even amidhis successes. "A clear fleecing of one. If one gets the better of adandy chap like that, and brings him down neat and clean, one oughtto have the spice of it. One ought to see him wince and--cuss 'emall!--that's just what they'll never do. No! not if it was ever so. Youmay pitch into 'em like Old Harry, and those d----d fine gentlemen willjust look as if they liked it. You might strike 'em dead at your feet,and it's my belief, while they was cold as stone they'd manage to looknot beaten yet. It's a fleecing of one--a fleecing of one!" he growledafresh; draining down a great draught of brandy-heated Roussillon todrown the impatient conviction which possessed him that, let him triumphas he would, there would ever remain, in that fine intangible sensewhich his coarse nature could feel, though he could not have furtherdefined it, a superiority in his adversary he could not conquer; adifference between him and his prey he could not bridge over.
The Jew laughed a little.
"Vot a child you are, you Big Ben! Vot matter how he look, so long asyou have de success and pocket de monish?"
Big Ben gave a long growl, like a mastiff tearing to reach a bone justheld above him.
"Hang the blunt! The yellows ain't a quarter worth to me what it 'ud beto see him just look as if he knew he was knocked over. Besides, layingagain' him by that ere commission's piled up hatsful of the ready, tobe sure; I don't say it ain't; but there's two thou' knocked off forWillon, and the fool don't deserve a tizzy of it. He went and put thepaint on so thick that, if the Club don't have a flare-up about thewhole thing----"
"Let dem!" said the Jew serenely. "Dey can do vot dey like; dey von'tget to de bottom of de vell. Dat Villon is sharp; he vill know how tokeep his tongue still; dey can prove nothing; dey may give de sack to astable-boy, or dey may think themselves mighty bright in seeing a mare'snest, but dey vill never come to us."
The welsher gave a loud, hoarse guffaw of relish and enjoyment.
"No! We know the ins and outs of Turf Law a trifle too well to be caughtnapping. A neater thing weren't ever done, if it hadn't been that thepaint was put a trifle too thick. The 'oss should have just run ill, andnot knocked over, clean out o' time like that. However, there ain't noodds a-crying over spilt milk. If the Club do come a inquiry, we'll show'em a few tricks that'll puzzle 'em. But it's my belief they'll let itoff on the quiet; there ain't a bit of evidence to show the 'oss wasdoctored, and the way he went stood quite as well for having beenknocked off his feed and off his legs by the woyage and sich like. Andnow you go and put that swell to the grindstone for Act 2 of the comedy;will yer?"
Ezra Baroni smiled, where he leaned against the table, looking over somepapers.
"Dis is a delicate matter; don't you come putting your big paw init--you'll spoil it all."
Ben Davis growled afresh:
"No, I ain't a-going. You know as well as me I can't show in the thing.Hanged if I wouldn't almost lief risk a lifer out at Botany Bay for thesake o' wringing my fine-feathered bird myself, but I daren't. If hewas to see me in it, all 'ud be up. You must do it. Get along; you lookuncommon respectable. If your coat-tails was a little longer, you mightright and away be took for a parson."
The Jew laughed softly, the welsher grimly, at the compliment they paidthe Church; Baroni put up his papers into a neat Russia letter book.Excellently dressed, without a touch of flashiness, he did lookeminently respectable--and lingered a moment.
"I say, dear child; vat if de Marquis vant to buy off and hush up? Tento von he vill; he care no more for monish than for dem macaroons, andhe love his friend, dey say."
Ben Davis took his legs off the table with a crash, and stoodup, flushed, thirstily eager, almost aggressive in his peremptoryexcitement.
"Without wringing my dainty bird's neck? Not for a million paid out o'hand! Without crushing my fine gentleman down into powder? Not for allthe blunt of every one o' the Rothschilds! Curse his woman's face! I'vegot to keep dark now; but when he's crushed, and smashed, and ruined,and pilloried, and drove out of this fine world, and warned off of allhis aristocratic race-courses, then I'll come in and take a look at him;then I'll see my brilliant gentleman a worn-out, broken-down swindler, adying in the bargain!"
The intense malignity, the brutal hungry lust for vengeance thatinspired the words, lent their coarse vulgarity something that wasfor the moment almost tragical in its strength; almost horrible in itspassion. Ezra Baroni looked at him quietly, then without another wordwent out--to a congenial task.
"Dat big child is a fool," mused the subtler and gentler Jew. "Vengeanceis but de breath of de vind; it blow for you one day, it blow againstyou de next; de only real good is monish."