Chapter 12

BRODIE, SMITH

BRODIE. What the devil brings you here?

SMITH. Confound it, Deakin! Not rusty?

BRODIE. (And not you only: Jean too! Are you mad?

SMITH. Why, you don't mean to say, Deakin, that you have been stodged by G. Smith, Esquire? Plummy old George?)

BRODIE. There was my uncle the Procurator----

SMITH. The Fiscal? He don't count.

BRODIE. What d'ye mean?

SMITH. Well, Deakin, since Fiscal Lawson's Nunkey Lawson, and it's all in the family way, I don't mind telling you that Nunkey Lawson's a customer of George's. We give Nunkey Lawson a good deal of brandy--G. S. and Co.'s celebrated Nantz.

BRODIE. What! does he buy that smuggled trash of yours?

SMITH. Well, we don't call it smuggled in the trade, Deakin. It's a wink and King George's picter between G. S. and the Nunks.

BRODIE. Gad! that's worth knowing. O Procurator, Procurator, is there no such thing as virtue? (_Allons!_ It's enough to cure a man of vice for this world and the other.) But hark you hither, Smith; this is all damned well in its way, but it don't explain what brings you here.

SMITH. I've trapped a pigeon for you.

BRODIE. Can't you pluck him yourself?

SMITH. Not me. He's too flash in the feather for a simple nobleman like George Lord Smith. It's the great Capting Starlight, fresh in from York. (He's exercised his noble art all the way from here to London. "Stand and deliver, stap my vitals!") And the North Road is no bad lay, Deakin.

BRODIE. Flush?

SMITH (_mimicking_). "Three graziers, split me! A mail, stap my vitals! and seven demned farmers, by the Lard----"

BRODIE. By Gad!

SMITH. Good for trade, ain't it? And we thought, Deakin, the Badger and me, that coins being ever on the vanish, and you not over sweet on them there lovely little locks at Leslie's, and them there bigger and uglier marine stores at the Excise Office....

BRODIE (_impassible_). Go on.

SMITH. Worse luck!... We thought, me and the Badger, you know, that maybe you'd like to exercise your _h_elbow with our free and galliant horseman.

BRODIE. The old move, I presume? The double set of dice?

SMITH. That's the rig, Deakin. What you drop on the square you pick up again on the cross. (Just as you did with G. S. and Co.'s own agent and correspondent, the Admiral from Nantz.) You always was a neat hand with the bones, Deakin.

BRODIE. The usual terms, I suppose?

SMITH. The old discount, Deakin. Ten in the pound for you, and the rest for your jolly companions every one. (_That's_ the way _we_ does it!)

BRODIE. Who has the dice?

SMITH. Our mutual friend, the Candleworm.

BRODIE. You mean Ainslie?--We trust that creature too much, Geordie.

SMITH. He's all right, Marquis. He wouldn't lay a finger on his own mother. Why, he's no more guile in him than a set of sheep's trotters.

(BRODIE. You think so? Then see he don't cheat you over the dice, and give you light for loaded. See to that George, see to that; and you may count the Captain as bare as his last grazier.

SMITH. The Black Flag for ever! George'll trot him round to Mother Clarke's in two twos.) How long'll you be?

BRODIE. The time to lock up and go to bed, and I'll be with you. Can you find your way out?

SMITH. Bloom on, my Sweet William, in peaceful array. Ta-ta.