“Yes,” continued Mr. Grahame; “if I stand in the position of a principal in the affair, you take the part of an accessory before the fact, and a very important one you are, too, inasmuch as you counselled the deed, and instructed me how to perform it, lending your assistance throughout.”
Mr. Chewkle would have here interposed some very emphatic observations, but that Mr. Grahame checked him, and continued speaking.
“It is not my intention,” he said, “or my wish that the conversation should assume its present tone. I would rather that it took a shape which, while it consulted my interest, gave liberal promise of rich advantages to you.”
“Last night, if you remember,” said Mr. Grahame, slowly fixing his eye firmly upon that of his ‘agent,’ “you threw out several suggestions calculated to afford me, in the distress of mind under which I was labouring, a very considerable degree of consolation. Do you remember this?”
Chewkle caught hold of his dusty, shaggy whiskers at the roots, and drew them out to their full extent with the tips of his fingers and thumb several times, to appear the unconscious act of a man plunged in reflection. Presently he said--
Mr. Grahame now repeated the plan which he had the previous evening proposed to accomplish by the aid of Mr. Jukes and his companions, by which, in spite of all Wilton’s protestations and oaths to the contrary, the signature was to be sworn to as being _bona fide_ and genuine.
Chewkle listened in silence, and when Mr. Grahame concluded by observing that he had almost decided upon adopting it, Mr. Chewkle felt himself to be unpleasantly situated upon the horns of a dilemma. Mr. Grahame had been candid enough to acknowledge that, unless he obtained the estate, he would be lost, destroyed, unable to reward the services of any person; but that if he, by the assistance of “zealous friends,” succeeded in securing it, the most magnificent recompense should be bestowed upon them.
Mr. Chewkle’s difficulty consisted in having possession of the deed. If he retained it, it seemed that Mr. Grahame would be reduced to poverty, and his _exposé_ of the guilty act of forgery would bring him nothing, perhaps, but the questionable advantage of being brought under the anxious consideration of a judge and jury, as a _particeps criminis_. If he gave it up to Mr. Grahame, he would have to account for its possession, an acknowledgment of the truth would place him at once in the power of Mr. Grahame, who could give him, if he pleased, into the custody of the police as a thief.