It was the monstrous slander of this minority that induced
the alderman to stand up morally for his revolver and to continue
talking about it. He suppressed the truth about the damaged ceiling; he
deliberately allowed the public to go on believing, with Brindley, that
he had aimed at the keyhole and really gone through it, and his
conscience was not at all disturbed. But that wicked traducers should
hint that he had been using blank cartridge made him furiously
indignant, and also exacerbated his gout. And he called on his cousin
Joe to prove that he had never spent a penny on blank cartridge.
It was a pity that he dragged the sardonic Joe back into the affair. Joe
observed to him that for a man in regular revolver practice he was
buying precious few cartridges; and so he had to lay in a stock. Now he
dared not employ these cartridges; and yet he wished to make a noise
with his revolver in order to convince the neighbourhood that he was in
steady practice. Nor dare he buy blank cartridges from Joe. It was not
safe to buy blank cartridges anywhere in the Five Towns, so easily does
news travel there, and so easily are reputations blown.
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