The Mystery Explained.—The Escape.—Jacob Gray’s New Lodging.
Jacob Gray was almost distilled with fear as this little dialogue
proceeded, and it seemed as if a mountain was taken off his breast when
he heard the husband go away, muttering something that was not intended
to meet his lady’s ear.
The corpulent lady then commenced a series of groans, which, however,
Jacob Gray soon put an end to, by appearing at the bedside, and saying,—
“If you don’t be quiet this moment, it shall be your last.”
“W—w—what do you want?” stammered the corpulent female.
“No matter,” said Gray; “tell me what dead body that is you have in the
attic?”
“Job Magnus,” said the lady, shaking the bed with trembling.
“Who?”
“Job Magnus—he—he was bought.”
“Bought, woman!”
“Yes—he—he was hanged last Monday, and my—my wretch of a husband bought
him.”
“What is your husband?”
“A doctor.”
The truth in a moment now flashed across Gray’s mind, and he cursed
himself bitterly for allowing his fears to cause him so much uneasiness
and terror as they had done. He, then, on the instant, thought of a
scheme to escape from the surgeon’s house without molestation, and
turning to the lady, he said in a solemn voice,—
“Do you know me?”
“No—no.”
“I have just come down stairs out of the cupboard. I am Job Magnus.”
“Mercy upon us!” cried the lady—“Oh! Have mercy upon us—our Father
which art in heaven.”
“Hush!” cried Gray, “don’t be mumbling there, but listen to me. If you
so much as speak one word, or stir from whence you are for the next
hour and a half, I’ll come down the chimney and strangle you.”
“Please, Mr. Ghost, spare my sinful life, and I won’t move. I’ll
confess all—Thomas ain’t that wretched husband’s of mine—he’s—he’s—I’m
quite sure—”
“Bush,” said Gray, with a menacing gesture, “do you imagine I want to
hear what, as a spirit, I know already?”
The corpulent lady groaned as she said,—
“Then you know all about the barber?”
Gray deliberately turned up the cuffs of his coat, and said calmly,—
“I am going to strangle you, if you open your lips again.”
The corpulent lady held up her hands in mute supplication, and after a
glance at her, and a contortion of his visage that nearly froze her
blood. Jacob Gray crept from the room, and commenced descending the
staircase.
He had not got half way down, when he heard some one coming up. He
paused in very great trepidation and laid hold of the banisters to
await the comer. His only chance now lay on his own firmness, and that
was nearly deserting him.
It was a young lad of about seventeen or eighteen, who was coming up
stairs, and when he saw Gray, he waited a step in surprise.
“Thomas,” said Gray, “I am Job Magnus—will you—”
Thomas did not stay to hear the remainder of what the apparition of the
hanged man, as he fully believed Gray to be, had to say, but turned
round, and made but one jump down the stairs again, never stopped till
he was in the kitchen, where he upset Deborah and a tray with the
breakfast things, just as she was emerging from the culinary department.
“So far successful,” muttered Gray, as he descended the remainder of
the stairs, and then passed through the door which opened into a little
parlour.
Hanging on a peg behind a door was a handsome cloak, and on another a
hat, both of which Gray made no hesitation in borrowing for the
occasion. Hastily attiring himself thus, he opened a small glass door,
and passed into the shop.
There was a little girl in the shop, knocking perseveringly on the
counter with the edge of a penny piece, and the moment Gray made his
appearance she commenced,—
“Oh, please sir, my mother says do—”
“Silence!” cried Gray—and he passed out into the street, leaving the
little girl with a full impression that the doctor had gone mad.
Jacob Gray’s first glance was towards his persecutors, and he saw that
the patience of all of them had been nearly tired out, with the
exception of the baker’s boy, who sat upon the edge of his basket and
told the story of a man being on the roofs of the houses to all comers.
“You wretch,” muttered Gray, “I should like to brain you.”
“Hilloa—here comes the doctor,” cried the boy, “why, you’ve got up
wrong end first, old cove.”
“Take that,” said Gray, as he dealt the boy a box on the face that sent
him sprawling backwards into his own basket, to the immense amusement
of all the other boys there collected, who, not to be behindhand in
asserting their right to the name of human beings, immediately made at
the fallen hero, and commenced hauling and pummelling him to their
heart’s content.
With a hasty step Gray left the scene of action, and struck at once
into a long narrow lane which led him among the by-streets at the back
of the Strand.
His first object now was to get a breakfast, and observing a little
dirty shop where every imaginable abomination in the eating line was
sold, he plunged into its dark recesses, and asked of a woman, whose
very appearance was enough to turn any one’s stomach, if he could have
some breakfast.
“That depends on what you want,” said the woman.
“Some meat,” said Gray; “I will pay you liberally if you will purchase
for me some meat, and let me eat it here.”
The words “pay liberally” acted like magic on the woman, for she
immediately unrolled her sleeves which were tucked up to the elbow, and
at once, by that process covering up all the dirt on her arms she said,—
“Oh dear yes, certainly—his honour could have whatever he liked; should
she take his honour’s hat and cloak? Would his honour walk up stairs?”
“Yes—up stairs,” said Gray, conceiving himself much more safe from
casual observation there than below.
The woman escorted him to a dismal-looking room on the first floor, and
promising to be quick in procuring what he required, she left him to
his meditations.
“This seems a likely place in which to conceal myself,” thought Gray,
“until I have rung from the fears of Learmont a sufficient sum to
enable me to put my now firm design into execution of leaving England,
I will ask this woman if she has a room she can spare me for a
permanency—no one would think of looking for me here; and in the
darkness of the evenings I can glide out to visit Learmont, and for
exercise.”
When the woman returned and laid before Jacob Gray some really good and
tempting meat, tolerably cooked, and had received his orders to get him
a bottle of wine, he turned his small, cunning eyes upon her, and said,—
“I have but newly come from abroad, and am in London concerning some
property that is left me: while I remain, can you accommodate me here?”
“Oh, certainly,” said the woman; “your honour can have any room in the
house.”
“I should prefer the quietest,” said Gray. “An attic will suit me as
well as any.”
“Well, your honour,” said the woman, “if you don’t mind an attic, we do
certainly have the best attic, though I say it, in London. Why, ’atween
two ‘chimbleys,’ when there ain’t a fog, and the brewhouse isn’t at
work, you may see a little bit of the river from our attic.”
“It will suit me very well, I dare say,” said Gray; “when I have
finished my meal, I will look at it.”
He was not long in consuming the meat and bread, and after a glass or
two of the wine he felt wonderfully refreshed, and his old quiet smile
of cunning and ferocity began to linger on his face as he muttered,—
“Well, if the squire consents to my terms, and advances me a large sum
of money at once, I will leave directly; and if he will not, I must
increase my demands upon him as far as I can, without awakening his
suspicions, and then leave him and Britton to destruction; it will go
hard but I will find a means of revenge against her, who has caused me
such unexampled misery and distress. Ada, beware! Yet you are not safe
from Jacob Gray. He is a miner, who works in silence and secret, until
some day you find what you verily considered the solid foundation on
which you were treading immutable, you will find it crumbling beneath
your feet. I have a plan—yes, I have a plan to wrest from you, Ada, all
that would have been yours had you waited my time.”
Full of these thoughts, Jacob Gray summoned the woman, and desired to
be shown the chamber she had mentioned. It was a remarkable low-roofed
attic, but it suited Gray well, for no one, he thought, would suspect
him of living in, to him, so dangerous a neighbourhood as the Strand,
where every inhabitant was full of gossip about the murder of Vaughan.
“This will do,” he said. “What is the price?”
Two shillings a week were named, to which Gray assented, and paying
some few weeks in advance, he said,—
“When ever I go out I take the key of this room with me, and whatever
requires to be done to it, must be done when I am at home, I make my
own bed.”
“Very well, just as you like.”
“And mark my words, if any one should come here and ask you if you have
a lodger of any description, unless you unhesitatingly answer no, I
leave directly.”
“Lor, sir,—suppose some friend of your honour’s was to call.”
“I—have no friends.”
“Indeed, your honour.”
“No—nor ever had any—nor ever shall—I am peculiarly situated. There are
people in this city who would murder me to keep me out of my just
property.”
“Is there indeed, sir? Oh, the wretches.”
“Yes, and the reason I come to live here is by the advice of my
lawyers, in order that I should not be found by those who would take my
life if they could.”
“Lord, what wickedness there is in the world,” said the woman.
“There is indeed,” said Gray, gravely. “When I come to my property,
depend upon a very handsome present from me if you obey my injunctions.”
The woman curtseyed to the very ground, and Gray then signified to her
that she might retire and leave him.
Jacob Gray little imagined how actively Sir Francis Hartleton was
watching him, and at that very moment that he was conversing with the
woman about the necessity of denying him to every one, a man was in the
doorway opposite taking the most accurate notice of the house, and
revolving in his mind some means of discovering whether Jacob Gray
intended remaining there or not.
The fact was, he had never been lost sight of by one or other of Sir
Francis Hartleton’s men, and although they had been momentarily at
fault when he got in at the doctor’s attic window, one of them had
remained on the spot while another went into a neighbouring house, the
owner of which he knew, and clambering out on the roof felt satisfied
that Gray was housed somewhere.
He was instantly recognised, notwithstanding the hat and cloak, by the
lynx-eyed officers, and quietly dogged to his new lodgings by one of
them, while another went across the park to the magistrate to report
proceedings, and take further orders.