Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by Google Books
Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source: Web Archive
https://ia801701.us.archive.org/19/items/
15553140.2979.emory.edu/15553140_2979.pdf
(Emory University)
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
A Novel,
BY
EDMUND YATES,
AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP," "KISSING THE ROD," ETC.
FORTITER--FIDELITER--FELICITER.
New Edition.
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.
1867.
------------------------------
JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.
TO
NICHOLAS HERBERT HARRINGTON,
OLD COMRADE AND TRIED FRIEND.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. NEWS.
II. MORE NEWS.
III. AT THE PARTHENIUM.
IV. IN THE SMOKING-ROOM.
V. GEORGIE.
VI. THE GRAYS.
VII. WHAT HAD DETAINED SIR CHARLES.
VIII. KISMET.
IX. MR. EFFINGHAM'S PROCEEDINGS.
X. SOUVENT FEMME VARIE.
XI. DOWN AT REDMOOR.
XII. DRAWING COVER.
XIII. SIR CHARLES'S VISIT.
XIV. IN THE TOILS.
XV. EGREMONT PRIORY.
XVI. CHECK.
XVII. COUNTERCHECK.
XVIII. IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.
XIX. DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND.
XX. CHECKMATE.
XXI. COLONEL ALSAGER'S COUNSEL.
XXII. KNOCKHOLT PARK.
XXIII. LORD DOLLAMORE'S COUNSEL.
XXIV. MR. EFFINGHAM'S PROGRESS.
XXV. A CRISIS AT REDMOOR.
XXVI. MR. WUFF'S "NEW STAR."
XXVII. LOVE AND DUTY.
XXVIII. SIR LAURENCE'S LETTER.
XXIX. A "TERCEL GENTLE."
XXX. NATURE AND ART.
XXXI. AMONG THE SPRINGS.
XXXII. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
XXXIII. LAST WORDS.
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
CHAPTER I.
NEWS.
Throughout the length and breadth of this London of ours there were
few legal firms, no matter of how old standing, doing a better, larger
ready-money business than that of Moss and Moss of Cursitor Street,
Chancery Lane. Looked down upon? Well, one could hardly say that. Old
Mr. Trivett, of the firm of Trivett, Coverdale, and Trivett of Bedford
Row, who had the secrets of half the first families in England locked
up in his dusty japanned boxes; young Mr. Markham, who, besides being
nominally a solicitor, was a high-bailiff somewhere, and had chambers
in the Albany, and rode a very maney and taily light chestnut cob in
the Row; and a few others,--might shrug their shoulders when the names
of Moss and Moss were mentioned; but that did no harm to Moss and
Moss, who, on the whole, were very well respected throughout the
profession. At Mrs. Edward Moss's Sunday-evening parties in the
Regent's Park were to be met many people whose names were pleasantly
familiar to the public. Mr. Smee, Q. C., known as "Alibi Smee" from
his great success in proving that his clients never had been within
fifty miles of the spot where the crime with which they were charged
was committed; Mr. Sergeant Orson; Mr. Tocsin, who bullied a witness
admirably, but who gave more trouble to Edward Moss than any other man
at the bar, wanting perpetual cramming and suggestions, and having the
face of brass and the lungs of steel and the head of wool; Mr.
Replevin, the most rising junior at the O.B.; and others, amongst
them. Gilks, the marine painter, some of whose choicest bits adorned
Mrs. Moss's walls; Kreese, the editor of the great sporting, literary,
and theatrical Sunday print, _The Scourge_; O'Meara of the Stock
Exchange; and actors, actresses, and singers too numerous to mention.
These last were invited through Mr. Marshall Moss, Edward's brother
and junior partner, who was a bachelor, and who, though he gave
occasional excellent Greenwich and Richmond dinners, yet had no house
of his own to entertain in. Marshall Moss attended to the more
convivial portion of the clients; the actors who had differed from
their managers; the ladies who wanted certain settlements arranged;
the sporting publicans who wanted "the screw put upon certain
parties;" the fast young gents requiring defence from civil
process,--were shown up to Marshall's room on the first-floor, a
comfortable room with several armchairs, and a cupboard never without
sherry and soda-water; a room where some of the best stories in London
were from time to time told, and which was fenced off with thick
double doors, to prevent the laughter caused by them penetrating to
Edward's sanctum downstairs.
For Edward attended to the real clients of the house--those for whom
it was originally established--those by whom its fame had been made.
And these were--thieves. Yes, there is no blinking the word. If a
burglar were "in trouble," if a forger had been apprehended, if some
very heavy turf-robbery had come to light, Edward Moss's busy brain
was at work, and Edward Moss's hours of sleep were ruthlessly
curtailed. He did not care about the heaviest kind of business, though
two or three murderers unquestionably owed their necks to his skill
and forethought; and he refused all petty cases of magsmen,
skittle-sharps, and card-swindlers. They would have longed to have
him; but they knew it was impossible. He did not like their style of
business, and, above all things fatal to a chance of their engaging
him, he never did anything on spec. When a man was "in trouble" he
knew that it was no use sending for Mr. Moss without being able to
tell him that at such-and-such a tavern or lodging-house he would find
a landlord willing and ready to advance the fee for the prisoner's
defence. Then Mr. Moss would step into the first hansom outside the
station, and hie away to St. Luke's, Cripplegate, Drury Lane, or any
other locality indicated, and returning with the money in his
pocket, would hear all that the prisoner had to say, and
straightway--determine on the line of defence. A wonderful little man,
Edward Moss! wonderful to look at! without the smallest sign of colour
in his shrunken, baggy, parchmenty face, with small gray eyes under
overhanging bristly brows, with a short stubbly head of gray hair, a
restless twitching mouth, thin wiry figure, and dirty hands with
close-bitten dubby nails. In these respects a very different man from
his brother Marshall, who was a by-no-means bad-looking Hebrew, with a
handsome beard and moustache, full scarlet lips, prominent brown eyes,
and in face and figure showing a general liking for the flesh-pots and
other good things of this life. Where Edward Moss wore dirt, Marshall
Moss sported jewelry, and each brother was sufficiently vain of his
display. Each knew his business perfectly, and neither interfered with
the other. Marshall's clients drove up in broughams or rattled in
hansoms to the front-door, went up the broad staircase to the
first-floor, and either passed straight into the presence, or beguiled
the necessary interval in the perusal of the daily papers handed to
them by obsequious clerks. Edward's clients sneaked in through a
narrow door up a side-court; had their names and business wrung from
them by the most precocious and most truculent of Jew boys; were left
to rub their greasy shoulders up and down the whitewashed walls of a
ghastly waiting-room until "Mithter Edward" chose to listen to the
recital of their distress and wishes.
Occasionally, however, visitors to Mr. Edward Moss came in at the
large front-door, and afterwards made the best of their way to his
sanctum. They were generally people who would not have been regarded
with much favour by the greasy-shouldered clients in the court. This
was one of them who entered Cursitor Street on a warm June afternoon,
and made straight for the front-door blazing with the door-plate of
"Moss and Moss." A middle-sized fattish man, ill-dressed in an
ill-fitting blue frock-coat and gray trousers, and a very
innocent-looking small hat with a black mourning-band; a sodden-faced
sleepy-looking man with mild blue eyes and an undecided mouth; a man
like a not very prosperous publican; a man, who, with a fresher
complexion, and at another time of year, might have been taken for a
visitor to the Cattle Show; who looked, in fact, anything but what he
was--chief officer of the City detectives and the terror of all the
evil-doers of the East-end. He walked through the hall, and, leaving
the staircase leading to Mr. Marshall Moss's rooms on his right,
passed to the end of the passage and tapped at a door on which was
inscribed the word "Private" in large letters. It must have been a
peculiar knock which he gave, for the door was immediately opened
merely wide enough to admit him, and closed as he passed through.
"Ah, ah!" said a little man in an enormous pair of spectacles; "ah,
ah! 'ith you, inthpector! The governor'th been athkin' after you
to-day. Let'th have a look," he continued, lifting a corner of a
green-baize curtain; "ah! he'th jutht shakin' off that troublethome
perjury. Now I'll give him your name."
This was Mr. Amedroz, Edward Moss's right-hand man, who knew all his
master's secrets, and who was so reticent that he never opened his
mouth where he could convey as much by writing. So Mr. Amedroz
inscribed "Stellfox" in large round-text on a slip of paper, laid it
before his principal, and, receiving an affirmative nod, ushered the
inspector into the presence.
"Morning, Stellfox," said Mr. Edward, glancing up from a mass of
papers in front of him; "report?"
Inspector Stellfox, unbuttoning his blue frock-coat, produced from his
breast-pocket a thick notebook, and commenced:
"Sorry to say, nothing new about Captain Congreve, sir. We've tried--"
"Now look here, Stellfox," interrupted Mr. Moss; "you've had that
business in hand a fortnight. If you don't report by Wednesday, I'll
give that to Scotland Yard. Your men are getting lazy, and I'll try
what Sir Richard Mayne's people can do. What next?"
Crestfallen, Inspector Stellfox continued,--"Slimy William, sir."
"Well," said Mr. Moss keenly, "what of him?"
"I think that's all right, sir. We've found out where his mother
lives,--Shad's Row, Wapping, No. 3; bill up in the window, 'a room to
let.' If you've no objection, one of my men shall take that room, sir,
and try and work it that way."
"No," said Mr. Moss; "must put a woman in there. Don't you know a
woman up to that sort of thing?"
"There's Hodder's wife, sir, as helped us in Charlton's case; she'd
do."
"I recollect; she'll do well. Furnished or unfurnished?"
"Unfurnished room, sir."
"All right; hire some furniture of the broker. Tell Mrs. Hodder to get
in at once. Widow; or husband employed on railway in the country. Must
keep a gin-bottle always open, and be generous with it. Old lady will
talk over her drink; and Mrs. Hodder must find out where Slimy William
is, what name he's going under, and must notice what letters old lady
receives. Tell her to take a child with her. Has she got a child?"
"Not of her own, sir."
"Never mind; must get one of some one else's. Must see you, or one of
your men, every morning. Child will want air--excuse for her taking
him out. If Slimy William is coming home on the sudden, child must be
taken ill in the middle of the night; she can take it to the doctor,
and come down to you."
"Right, sir. Now about Coping Crossman."
"Well?"
"Markham will have him to-night, sir. That girl 'Liza Burdon blew his
gaff for him last night. He's a comic singer, he is. Goes by the name
of Munmorency, and sings at the Cambridge Music-hall."
"Good! What of Mitford?"
"Well, nothing yet, sir. You're hard upon me, Mr. Moss, and that you
are. We've only had that case three days, and you're expecting
information already."
"Stellfox," said Mr. Moss rising, and taking a sonorous pinch of
snuff, "you detectives are mere shams. You've been spoilt by the penny
press, and the shilling books, and all that. You think you're
wonderful fellows, and you know nothing--literally nothing. If I
didn't do your work as well as my own, where should we be? Don't
answer; listen! Mitford has been three times within the last week to
the Crown coffee-house in Doctors' Commons. There's very little doubt
that he'll go there again; for it's a quiet house, and he seems to
like it. You've got his description; be off at once."
Inspector Stellfox had transacted too much business with Mr. Edward
Moss to expect any further converse, so he took up the child's hat and
quietly bowed and departed.
To say that of all the intensely-quiet and respectable houses in that
strange portion of the City of London known as Doctors' Commons the
Crown coffee-house is the most quiet and respectable, is making a
strong assertion, but one which could yet be borne out by facts. It is
a sleepy, dreamy neighbourhood still, although its original intense
dulness has been somewhat enlivened by the pedestrians who make Paul's
Chain a passage to the steamboats calling at Paul's Wharf; and the
hansom cabs which find a short cut down Great St. Andrew's Hill to the
South-Western Railway. But it is still the resort of abnormal
individuals,--ticket-porters, to wit; plethoric individuals in
half-dirty white aprons and big badges like gigantic opera-checks, men
whose only use seems to be to warn approaching vehicles of the
blocking-up of the narrow streets; and sable-clad mottled-faced
proctors and their clerks. There are real green trees in Doctors'
Commons; and flies and butterflies--by no means bad imitations of the
real country insect--are seen there on the wing in the sultry summer
days, buzzing round the heads of the ticket-porters, and of the strong
men who load the Bottle Company's heavy carts, and who are always
flinging huge fragments of rusty iron into the capacious hold of the
Mary Anne of Goole, stuck high and dry in the mud off Paul's Wharf
before mentioned. Life is rampant in the immediate vicinity,--in
enormous Manchester warehouses, perpetually inhaling the contents of
enormous Pickford's vans; in huge blocks of offices where the
representatives of vast provincial firms take orders and transact
business; in corn-stores and iron-companies; in mansions filled from
basement to roof with Dresden china and Bohemian glass in
insurance-offices and banks; and in the office of the great journal,
where the engines for six days out of the seven, are unceasingly
throbbing. But in the Commons life gives way to mere existence and
vegetation. The organ-man plays unmolested on Addle Hill, and the
children's shuttlecocks flutter in Wardrobe Place; no Pickford's vans
disturb the calm serenity of Great Knightrider Street; and instead of
warehouses and offices, there are quaint old dumpy congregationless
churches, big rambling old halls of City Companies, the forgotten old
Heralds' College with its purposeless traditions, a few apparently
nothing-doing shops, a number of proctors' offices into which man is
never seen to enter, and two or three refreshment-rooms. Of these the
Crown is the oldest and the dirtiest. It was established--if you may
trust the half-effaced legend over its door--in 1790, and it has ever
since been doing the same quiet sleepy trade. It cannot understand
what Kammerer's means by it. Kammerer's is the refreshment-house at
the corner, which has long since escaped from the chrysalis state of
coffee-shop, and now, resplendent with plate-glass and mahogany bar,
cooks joints, and draws the celebrated "Crm Grw" Llangollen ale, and
is filled with a perpetual stream of clattering junior clerks from the
adjacent warehouses. The Crown--according to its proprietor, in whose
family its lease has been vested since its establishment--don't do
nothin' of this sort, and don't want to. It still regards chops and
steaks as the most delicious of human food, and tea and coffee as the
only beverages by which their consumption should be accompanied.
Across its window still stretches an illuminated blind representing an
Italian gentleman putting off in a boat with apparently nothing more
serviceable for navigation purposes than a blue banjo; and it still
makes a gorgeous display of two large coffee-cups and saucers, with
one egg in a blue egg-cup between them. Its interior is still cut up
into brown boxes with hard narrow seats, on which you must either sit
bolt upright, or fall off at once; its narrow old tables are scarred
and notched and worm-eaten; and it holds yet by its sawdusted floor.
About seven o'clock in the evening of the same day on which Inspector
Stellfox had consulted Mr. Moss, the green-baize door of the Crown was
gently swung open, and a man slinking in dived into the nearest box
then vacant. He was a young fellow of not more than three-and-twenty,
with well-cut regular features, and who would have been handsome had
not his complexion been so sallow and his cheeks so pinched. His gaunt
attenuated frame, thin hands, and eyes of unnatural brightness and
restlessness, all told of recent illness; and though it was summer
time his threadbare coat was tightly buttoned round his throat, and he
shivered as he seated himself, and looked hungrily at the cooking-fire
burning in the kitchen at the other end of the shop. After furtively
glancing round him he beckoned the proprietor, gave him an order for
some small refreshment, and then taking down an old volume of the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ from a neighbouring shelf, began to turn over
its pages in a listless, purposeless manner. While he was thus
engaged, the green-baize door swung open again, admitting a portly man
with a child's hat perched on the top of his round head, who, walking
into the middle of the shop, ordered from that post of vantage "a
large cup of coffee and a rasher," then looked round the different
boxes, and finally settled himself with his back to the light in that
box where the last arrival was seated. The portly man made the other
visitor a very polite bow, which was scarcely returned, and the first
comer bent more earnestly over his book and shrouded his face with his
hand. But the portly man, who was no other than Inspector Stellfox,
had been too long in his profession not to know his business
thoroughly, and so he hung up the child's hat on a peg immediately
over his friend's head, and he took hold of a newspaper which lay
directly under his friend's elbow; and taking advantage of each
opportunity to look his friend over and over, saw that he was on the
right track, and thoroughly made up his mind what to do when the
chance arrived. The chance arrived simultaneously with the refreshment
ordered by the haggard man: he had to put down his hand to reach the
tray, and in so doing his eyes met those of the inspector, who at once
winked and laid his finger on his lip.
"Mr. Mitford?" said he in a fat voice; "ah! I thought so. No, you
don't, sir," he continued, pushing back the man, who had attempted to
start up; "it's all right; that little matter at Canterbury's been
squared up long since. I wanted to see you about something else. Look
here, sir;" and the inspector took from his pocketbook a printed slip
of paper, and handed it across the table to his companion, who read as
follows:
"FATAL AND APPALLING ACCIDENT.
"We (_Bridgewater Mercury_) deeply regret to hear that a telegram has
been received from Malta stating that Sir Percy Mitford of Redmoor
near this town, and his two sons, aged twelve and nine, were drowned
by the upsetting of a little boat in which they were proceeding to Sir
Percy's well-known yacht Enchantress, then anchored off Valetta. By
this dreadful accident the title and estates pass into another branch
of the family; the heir being Sir Percy's nephew, Mr. Charles
Wentworth Mitford, now studying abroad."
"There, sir! there's news for you!" said Inspector Stellfox; "we know
what studying abroad means, don't we? We knows--" but Inspector
Stellfox stopped suddenly; for his companion, after glaring at him
vacantly for an instant with the paper outstretched in his rigid hand,
fell forward in a fit.