"
"We had all the best authorities," said Dick Benyon, "as you'd know if
you'd read the prospectus."
"Hang the prospectus! What's the good of reading a man's puff of his own
wares? But I'm certain you hadn't one authority."
"Well, who's your authority?" asked Jimmy, with a contempt that he took
no trouble to conceal.
"What he said was confidential, you know----"
"Oh, you won't get out of it like that. We're all friends here. Fire
away."
Thus exhorted, and indeed nothing loth--for he had not read the prospectus
and knew not the full extent of what he did--Morewood drew his malicious
little bow and shot his arrow, sharper-pointed than he fancied. "I
suppose you'll admit," said he with the exaggerated carelessness of a
man with an unanswerable case, "that poor old Maturin was some authority,
and he told me in confidence--I asked him about it, you know, just to be
able to warn you fellows--that there was an absolutely fatal defect in
your machine."
To score too great a triumph is sometimes as disconcerting as to fail.
There was no chorus of indignation, no denial of Maturin's authority, no
good-natured scoffing such as Morewood had expected.
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