Giant Despair."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE SHADES LOSE SEVERAL GOOD CUSTOMERS.

It would be unfair to Samuel Shuckleford to say that he had no
compunction whatever in deciding upon a course of action which he knew
would involve the ruin of Reginald Cruden.

He did not like it at all. It was a nuisance; it was a complication
likely to hamper him. He wished his mother and sister would be less
gushing in the friendships they made. What right had they to interfere
with his business prospects by tacking themselves on to the family of a
man who was afterwards to turn out a swindler?

Yes, it was a nuisance; but for all that it must not be allowed to
interfere with the course that lay before the rising lawyer. Business
is business after all, and if Cruden is a swindler, whose fault is it if
Cruden's mother breaks her heart? Not S.S.'s, at any rate. But S.S.'s
fault it would be if he made a mess of this "big job"! That was a
reproach no one should lay at his door.

Samuel may not have been quite the Solomon he was wont to estimate
himself. Still, to do him justice once more, he displayed no little
ability in tracing out the different frauds of the Select Agency
Corporation and establishing Reginald's guilt conclusively in his own
mind.

It all fitted in like a curious puzzle. His sudden mysterious departure
from London--his change of name--the selection of Liverpool as
headquarters--the distribution of the circulars among unsuspecting
schoolmistresses in the south of England--the demand for money to be
enclosed with the order--and the fiction of the dispatch of the goods
from London. What else could it point to but a deliberate, deeply-laid
scheme of fraud? The further Samuel went, the clearer it all appeared,
and the less compunction he felt for running to earth such a scoundrel.

But he was going to do nothing in a hurry. S.S. was not the man to dish
himself by showing his cards till he was sure he had them all in his
hand. Possibly Cruden was not alone in the swindle. He might have
accomplices. Even his mother and brother--who can answer for the
duplicity of human nature?--might know more of his operations than they
professed to know. He might have confederates among his old companions
at the _Rocket_, or even among his old school acquaintances. Yes; there
was plenty to go into before Samuel put down his foot, and who knew
better how to go into it than S.S.?

So he kept his own counsel, and, exce