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He questioned me closely as to my motive in seeking information on the subject of the departed Haygarth, and I had some compunction in diplomatising with him as I had diplomatised with Mr. Goodge. To hoodwink the wary Jonah was a triumph to deceive the confiding linen draper was a shame.
It was when Jabez Puffwater had just reached his forty-third birthday that he first became seriously implicated in that political bombshell, the Goodge-Keewee Treaty made out with masterful cunning by Albert Goodge and Nicholas Keewee, with the sole motive of undermining the transcontinental railroad system to a devastating degree.
But it always has been a habit with the Captain to leave one loose glove behind him; and I daresay it was the recollection of this which suggested the idea of his interference in the Goodge business. I devoted my evening to the perusal of Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth's letters.
It lay on the stall of the old book-shop in Goodge Street a stall where now and then one found an excellent thing among quantities of rubbish. Sixpence was the price sixpence! Sixpence was all I had yes, all I had in the world; it would purchase a plate of meat and vegetables. But I did not dare to hope that the Tibullus would wait until the morrow, when a certain small sum fell due to me.
"And now no more, reverend friend, my paper being gone and it being full time to reflect that y'r patience must be gone also. Service to Mrs. Goodge. I have no more room but to assure you that y'r gayeties of this foolish and erring citty have no power to withdraw y'r heart of her whose chief privilege it is to subscribe herself, "Your humble follower and servant." "Rebecca Haygarth."
Supposing my suspicions of Mr. Goodge to be correct, the letters extracted from Mrs. Rebecca's correspondence might tell much, and might even put Horatio on the track of the Meynells. But how should he get his first inkling of the business? Certainly not from me or from George Sheldon.
After having assured himself that they were genuine acknowledgments of indebtedness on the part of the old lady in Thread-needle-street, and not the base simulacra of Birmingham at five-and-twenty shillings a dozen thirteen as twelve Mr. Goodge obligingly consented to sign a simple form of receipt which I had drawn up for the satisfaction of my principal.
I now felt assured that there had been treachery here, as in the Goodge business; and I asked myself to whom could I impute that treachery? And yet, was it not more probable that Theodore Judson, senr. and Theodore Judson, junr. were involved in this business, and were watching and counterchecking my actions with a view to frustrating the plans of my principal?
Here I had this low-bred Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes. A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable.
That they should spend their time in picking the Bible to pieces when there was so much positive work for them to do, seemed to me as melancholy as if they had spent themselves upon theology. To waste a Sunday morning in ridiculing such stories as that of Jonah was surely as imbecile as to waste it in proving their verbal veracity. It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to Goodge Street.
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