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Updated: September 13, 2025
A hell-like voice in Morris's own bosom gave the answer: 'Blackmail me. Anxiety the Second: The Fraud of the Tontine; or, Is my Uncle dead? This, on which all Morris's hopes depended, was yet a question. He had tried to bully Teena; he had tried to bribe her; and nothing came of it. He had his moral conviction still; but you cannot blackmail a sharp lawyer on a moral conviction.
He took lodgings at the Tontine, like a gentleman of means; was free and liberal in his expenditures; invited his friends often to suppers of game and oysters, which invitations were but too often accepted; and as he knew nothing of his own business, but continued to repose all confidence in his chief clerk taking his assurances that all was well, he supposed it was so, and began to fancy that he was actually becoming rich.
Suppose we start one of those tontine affairs ourselves; I to pay five hundred a year, and you to guarantee me against every misfortune except illness or marriage. 'It strikes me, remarked the lawyer with a meditative laugh, as he lighted a cigar, 'it strikes me that you must be a cursed nuisance in this world of ours.
He growled: "Yes, it's hellish. We don't like the idea of Flynn going off by himself and at the same time we are all afraid to stay here. That damn Tontine policy. If not for that we would not " His sentence was left unfinished. Several of the old heads nodded in agreement. Flynn looked up. With an air of obviously false bravado he exclaimed: "What the hell is there to be afraid of?
Here was a last injustice; he had been robbed while he was an orphan at school, he had been lashed to a decadent leather business, he had been saddled with Miss Hazeltine, his cousin had been defrauding him of the tontine, and he had borne all this, we might almost say, with dignity, and now they had gone and killed his uncle!
But really, you know, now we're in it, I've seen worse. 'And what am I to do? complained the victim. 'How can I entertain a friend? 'My dear Johnny, if you don't think the tontine worth a little trouble, say so, and I'll give the business up. 'You're dead certain of the figures, I suppose? asked John. 'Well' with a deep sigh 'send me the Pink Un and all the comic papers regularly.
"Not in the least; it's of no account," said Morris. "It only contained specimens." And he walked hastily away. Ensconced once more in a hansom, he proceeded to reconsider his position. He should lose the tontine, and with that the last hope of his seven thousand eight hundred pounds.
These men must be above such things. What is there, aside from the insurance, that has held this group together for sixty-five years?" "Oh, so you heard about this Tontine insurance, did you?" asked McCall. "I told Professor Brierly about it, Mac," stated Jimmy. "Oh, I see. Well, you're right, Professor. This is not the thing that holds them together."
Next day our prospectus appeared in the newspapers. It was read, canvassed, and generally approved of. During the afternoon, I took an opportunity of looking into the Tontine, and whilst under shelter of the Glasgow Herald, my ears were solaced with such ejaculations as the following: "I say, Jimsy, hae ye seen this grand new prospectus for a railway tae Glenmutchkin?" "Ay it looks no that ill.
She received us kindly, and six days later landed us all at no great distance from Fulton Market. When my foot touched the wharf, my whole estate was under my hat, and my pockets were as empty as a vessel with a swept hold. On the wharf, itself, I saw a man who had been second-mate of the Tontine, the little ship in which I had sailed when I first ran from the Sterling.
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