Page:Facts, failures and frauds- revelations, financial, mercantile, criminal.djvu/173

FACTS, FAILUBES, A>'D FUAUDS. IGl during the temporary employment Colo had lately given to him, on his application, to be disposed to submit implicitly to whatever he deemed the inevitable necessities of a position which would procure for him subsistence. No time was to be lost in putting such a man in possession. This was done, but without obtaining for him a license. Cole, who saw no reason to make Maltby the partner of his plans, merely vouchsafed to inform him that he had taken the wharf in order to economize charges on a largely increasing trade in metals. Sufficient light would, in due time, be let into the mind of Maltby, who as yet had not caught sight even of the scintillations of those dazzling visions that shone on the career of Cole. With a simplicity that approached stolidity, Maltby formed such an idea of the omnipotency of Cole, that he was ready to do anything commanded by his employer, looking to him "to put all right," and uninquiring as to the results of a course full of peril to himself, as subjecting him not only to the charge of signing warrants for goods for which he had nothing to show, but of entering into a conspiracy to defraud. Maltby, as Cole had done, created himself into a firm, to be styled "Maltby and Co.," and then called on Messrs. Groves and Sons, the lessees of the adjoining warehouses, representing, as the agent of Cole Brothers, that the wharf which they had taken was insufficient for the accommodation of the goods lightered there, and stating their willingness to enter into an arrangement by which, after he had weighed the goods, they should store the same away, he receiving the landing charges, and they the charges for rent. Nothing could seem more equitable than this proposal; it was quite in the usual course of business, and Messrs. Groves and Sons had accordingly no hesitation in giving their compliance. Maltby was delighted for the sake of his employers; but he had a parting request to make, a slight one, to which Messrs. Groves and Sons, after the spirit of accommodation they had shown, would doubtless