When the lights go out at the end of The Confidence-Man, we're left wondering whether the cosmopolitan is taking the old man to his sleeping quarters or whether the old man is headed for his—gulp—big sleep. Seriously, it's a toss up, and the ending isn't designed to answer any of the questions brought up in the novel. It's sort of a lingering question: "What do you have confidence in, eh?"
Up until now, we haven't seen anything as ghastly as murder, but we've been told a heinous tall tale about a mass butchering, and at one point, we do seriously worry about the safety of the miser. Threats abound at every turn, and we're not convinced that everything is peachy-keen.
In fact, when the bedeviled lamp gets extinguished, we're given no cozy reason to feel secure, as much as we'd like to believe that this could kind of, sort of, maybe mean that evil has been snuffed out. Yeah, probably not. There just aren't any easy answers to the questions Melville raises in this novel.
Probably best to invest in a nightlight.