oom swam round Morris. 'What--what's that?' he cried, grasping the
table. He was miserably conscious the next moment of his shrill tongue
and ashen face. 'What do you mean--it will not be presented? Why am I to
take care? What is all this mummery?'

'I have no idea, Mr Finsbury,' replied the smiling Hebrew. 'It was a
message I was to deliver. The expressions were put into my mouth.'

'What is your client's name?' asked Morris.

'That is a secret for the moment,' answered Mr Moss. Morris bent toward
him. 'It's not the bank?' he asked hoarsely.

'I have no authority to say more, Mr Finsbury,' returned Mr Moss. 'I
will wish you a good morning, if you please.'

'Wish me a good morning!' thought Morris; and the next moment, seizing
his hat, he fled from his place of business like a madman. Three streets
away he stopped and groaned. 'Lord! I should have borrowed from the
manager!' he cried. 'But it's too late now; it would look dicky to go
back; I'm penniless--simply penniless--like the unemployed.'

He went home and sat in the dismantled dining-room with his head in his
hands. Newton never thought harder than this victim of circumstances,
and yet no clearness came. 'It may be a defect in my intelligence,' he
cried, rising to his feet, 'but I cannot see that I am fairly used. The
bad luck I've had is a thing to write to The Times about; it's enough to
breed a revolution. And the plain English of the whole thing is that I
must have money at once. I'm done with all morality now; I'm long past
that stage; money I must have, and the only chance I see is Bent Pitman.
Bent Pitman is a criminal, and therefore his position's weak. He must
have some of that eight hundred left; if he has I'll force him to go
shares; and even if he hasn't, I'll tell him the tontine affair, and
with a desperate man like Pitman at my back, it'll be strange if I don't
succeed.'

Well and good. But how to lay hands upon Bent Pitman, except by
advertisement, was not so clear. And even so, in what terms to ask a
meeting? on what grounds? and where? Not at John Street, for it would
never do to let a man like Bent Pitman know your real address; nor yet
at Pitman's house, some dreadful place in Holloway, with a trapdoor
in the back kitchen; a house which you might enter in a light summer
overcoat and varnished boots, to come forth again piecemeal in a
market-basket. That was the drawback of a really efficient accomplice,
Morris felt, not without a shudder