IN WHICH PAUL SOMERTON ENTERS UPON A
DELICATE, DIFFICULT, AND DANGEROUS TASK.
Mr. Richard Tallant was a member of several London clubs. The one to
which his friend Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs invited him was a third-rate
establishment, rapidly degenerating into a mere association of gamblers.
The members met in an evening and kept up in appearance mild whist at
shilling points; but large bets were made upon the odd tricks, “each
and every.”
Loo was not permitted because it was too much of a gambling game. The
Ashford Club assumed a virtue they did not possess. Members might bet a
thousand pounds on the odd trick at whist, but they must not play Loo.
It was here that Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs made most of his money, and there
was every reason to fear that Richard Tallant was not above helping
him. The spirit of gambling had fairly taken possession of Richard’s
mind, and he sank with it into the practice of all sorts of vices.
In the City Mr. Richard Tallant was known as a young, wealthy,
devil-may-care fellow, a man to know, and a man to fear. He often
speculated largely, unknown to his father, and had more than once
“rigged” the share market to great advantage. His position gave him
excellent opportunities to obtain information which was of financial
value, and Shuffleton Gibbs was deep enough to put his friend up to all
sorts of stock-jobbing tricks that often turned him in good round sums
of money.
One would have thought that this legalised gambling would have been
sufficient for Mr. Tallant and his friend Gibbs; but Gibbs was an old
card-sharper; he loved the fierce excitement of the table, and there
was more certain success in a doctored card and a loaded dice than in
stock-jobbing.
You see we don’t at all disguise Mr. Gibbs’s character; he was a
thorough-paced blackguard, and Mr. Richard Tallant was graduating very
successfully in the Blackguard school. At present he is not aware that
Gibbs is indebted to anything but skill for his success at cards: he
has never seen the disgraced Oxford _roué’s_ private room.
Paul Somerton’s inquiries had not led him to a knowledge of all that
we have here set down; but in less than a month he had come to the
conclusion that Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs was a scoundrel, and that Mr.
Richard Tallant was not conducting himself in a manner calculated to
uphold the honour of his father’s name.
And young Hammerton, the heir to the earldom of Verner: no good
could come of his association with Mr. Gibbs and Tallant junior. How
persistent Amy was in her inquiries about Mr. Hammerton!
“I can’t see why you be so anxious to know all about their goings on,”
said Mr. Thomas Dibble, in one of their once-a-week perambulations.
“Well, never mind, old boy,” said Paul; “you and I are good friends and
always will be. Why cannot we have our little confidences like other
people?”
“No reason at all,” said Dibble, looking round at a baked-potato stove.
“Have a potato?” said Paul, stopping his friend forcibly as they were
turning into Piccadilly.
Mr. Dibble stared at him to see if he were in earnest.
“All right, old boy; I know you like them; have one, don’t mind me.”
Dibble instantly complied with Paul’s request, and was soon engaged in
devouring the mealy esculent.
In a few minutes he said, as well as he could speak with a mouthful of
the baked temptation,--
“That be kind of you now, Master Paul, very; you knows I likes
taters,--we’ve all our likes and dislikes, eh, Mister Somerton? My
weakness is Mrs. Dibble and baked pertaters!”
“And pudding, old Dib--now confess.”
Old Dibble laughed, and said Paul was a regular good un; and from
this the porter was easily led on to repeat little things which he
occasionally saw and heard in Mr. Richard Tallant’s room.
Whilst they were talking, a brougham pulled up to the edge of the
pavement, and Paul saw that it was occupied by the Hon. Lionel
Hammerton.
“Let us wait here a few moments, Dib; I think I know that gentleman,”
said Paul, detaining his friend.
A smart footman leaped from the box, opened the carriage door, and out
stepped Mr. Hammerton, who immediately disappeared up a flight of steps
which led into a dingy but rather ostentatious building.
“Dib, old boy, we must see what place this is.”
“This?” said Dibble; “why it be the Ashford Club. I know Mister Fencer,
who takes care of the rooms; Mrs. Fencer be quite a crony of Mrs.
Dibble’s.”
“The Ashford Club, eh? I should like to have a peep at the place
inside, Dib.”
“Well, that be easy enough, I s’pose. Let us call and ask Mr. Fencer
how he be.”
They went up the flight of stone steps, and found Mr. Fencer, who
patronised Mr. Dibble in majestic style.
Fencer was a fussy, pompous person, as was also Mrs. Fencer, who was
absent this evening; being, in fact, on a visit to Mrs. Dibble. Fencer,
therefore, was fussier and more pompous than usual, and he took Mr.
Somerton and Dibble into his little room and treated them to hot
gin-and-water, _ad libitum_.
By-and-by Paul Somerton insiduously got on the blind side of Mr.
Fencer, and obtained permission to go and have a peep into the
card-room; where Paul, through a half-opened door, saw Mr. Richard
Tallant, Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, Mr. Hammerton, and another gentleman,
seriously occupied at cards. There were several other little card
parties in the room, but Paul had no eyes for any other table than that
at which the Hon. Lionel Hammerton was seated. Earl Verner’s brother
was evidently the greatest loser, though his partner, Mr. Tallant, was
also betting heavily, and unsuccessfully it seemed, with the fourth
gentleman, who was unknown to Paul.
This was enough for the present. Paul joined Fencer and Dibble again,
making himself particularly agreeable to the former, and promising to
pay him another visit on the first opportunity that occurred.
Meanwhile Paul cared for nothing more but to get back to Pimlico and to
bed. There was something wrong going on, Paul was sure; he would write
to Amy in the morning and reply fully to her inquiries.
Dibble was particularly communicative on the way home, on account of
Fencer’s large dose of gin; he told Paul that he would stick to him
till death, and tell him anything he knew. He believed Mister Gibbs
was no better than a swindler, and his master’s son was surely a
reprobate.
“You should have heard what Fencer told me private,” Dibble went on,
nodding his head, and clinging hard and fast to Paul Somerton’s arm:
“that Mister Gentleman Gibbs is a sort of Jeremy Diddler, sir, depend
on it; and master’s son is, they do say, the fastest man about town.”
“Indeed! all right, Dib. I’ll hold you up, old boy,” said Paul, as
Dibble plunged and fought his way through an imaginary crowd of
obstructions.
Dibble gradually becoming helpless, Paul was compelled to call a cab;
and they reached Still Street just in time to find Mrs. Dibble alone
and in good humour.
But a change rapidly came over the salubrious calm when Mrs. Dibble
noticed Thomas’s neck-tie twisted round to the back of his neck, and
saw him gazing at her in a helpless state of idiotic admiration and
amazement.
Turning upon Paul she poured out such a volley of declamation against
deceit, and the leading of innocence into temptation and sin, that
Paul was fain to rush off to bed, and leave poor Dibble to contend with
the remainder of the storm. He heard the matrimonial tempest raging
for fully an hour after he had retired, until at length it gradually
subsided, and peace was proclaimed in the sonorous snore of Dibblonian
repose.
It was long past midnight when the last card-party at the Ashford
Club broke up. Young Hammerton and Richard Tallant left together,
and Hammerton accepted the offer of a bed at Mr. Tallant’s house in
Connaught Place, where a cab soon deposited them.
The moon shone peacefully over the park as they crossed it, and made
silvery sparkles on the windows of the long, fashionable row of houses.
The trees stood out in the uncertain lights, with early spring leaves
upon them. The long rows of lamps looked yellow and out of place in the
pure light of the moon; and the distant whistle of a railway engine
seemed all the more to mark the morning stillness.
That whistle came home to Lionel Hammerton; it seemed to upbraid him,
and at the same time invite him to the country of the Berne Hills. He
had promised to return to his brother (who had been lying ill there for
several weeks) two days ago; but the infatuation of play had come upon
him, and his large losses of this evening had prompted him to endeavour
to retrieve his ill-luck on the morrow. Mr. Gibbs had promised him his
revenge, and Tallant and he were pledged to visit the Ashford on the
next night.
Mr. Tallant was light-hearted enough over his losses, whilst Hammerton
sat gloomily thinking of his, and the sick brother, for whom he had a
real affection. Mr. Richard Tallant hummed bits of an operatic chorus,
and the most popular bars of the latest waltz.
The two card acquaintances said scarcely a word until they bade each
other good-night; and before Mr. Tallant was up the next day the Hon.
Lionel Hammerton was steaming away on the Great Western to the halls
of his fathers by the Berne Hills.
A glorious old place that castle where Earl Verner resided, full of odd
nooks and corners, with quaint gables, and grey, ivy-clad turrets; a
castle which had held out for months during the great rebellion. The
older portion had been supplemented with some new buildings designed in
harmony with the ancient architecture of the original building.
Before this history is complete the reader may be called upon to visit
Montem Castle: until then it is not necessary, perhaps, to say more
than that it was the ancient seat of the Verner family.