IN WHICH WILLIAM DENT PITMAN TAKES LEGAL ADVICE
Norfolk Street, King's Road--jocularly known among Mr. Pitman's lodgers
as "Norfolk Island"--is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing
thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-of-all-work issue from it in
pursuit of beer, or linger on its sidewalk listening to the voice of
love. The cat's-meat man passes twice a day. An occasional organ-grinder
wanders in and wanders out again, disgusted. In holiday-time the street
is the arena of the young bloods of the neighbourhood, and the
house-holders have an opportunity of studying the manly art of
self-defence. And yet Norfolk Street has one claim to be respectable,
for it contains not a single shop--unless you count the public-house at
the corner, which is really in the King's Road.
The door of No. 7 bore a brass plate inscribed with the legend "W.D.
Pitman, Artist." It was not a particularly clean brass plate, nor was
No. 7 itself a particularly inviting place of residence. And yet it had
a character of its own, such as may well quicken the pulse of the
reader's curiosity. For here was the home of an artist--and a
distinguished artist too, highly distinguished by his ill-success--which
had never been made the subject of an article in the illustrated
magazines. No wood-engraver had ever reproduced "a corner in the back
drawing-room" or "the studio mantelpiece" of No. 7; no young lady author
had ever commented on "the unaffected simplicity" with which Mr. Pitman
received her in the midst of his "treasures." It is an omission I would
gladly supply, but our business is only with the backward parts and
"abject rear" of this aesthetic dwelling.
Here was a garden, boasting a dwarf fountain (that never played) in the
centre, a few grimy-looking flowers in pots, two or three newly-planted
trees which the spring of Chelsea visited without noticeable
consequence, and two or three statues after the antique, representing
satyrs and nymphs in the worst possible style of sculptured art. On one
side the garden was overshadowed by a pair of crazy studios, usually
hired out to the more obscure and youthful practitioners of British art.
Opposite these another lofty out-building, somewhat more carefully
finished, and boasting of a communication with the house and a private
door on the back lane, enshrined the multifarious industry of Mr.
Pitman. All day, it is true, he was engaged in the work of education at
a seminary for young ladies; but the evenings at least were his own, and
these he would prolong far into the night, now dashing off "A landscape
with waterfall" in oil, now a volunteer bust ("in marble," as he would
gently but proudly observe) of some public character, now stooping his
chisel to a mere "nymph" ("for a gas-bracket on a stair, sir "), or a
life-size "Infant Samuel" for a religious nursery. Mr. Pitman had
studied in Paris, and he had studied in Rome, supplied with funds by a
fond parent who went subsequently bankrupt in consequence of a fall in
corsets; and though he was never thought to have the smallest modicum of
talent, it was at one time supposed that he had learned his business.
Eighteen years of what is called "tuition" had relieved him of the
dangerous knowledge. His artist lodgers would sometimes reason with him;
they would point out to him how impossible it was to paint by gas-light,
or to sculpture life-sized nymphs without a model.
"I know that," he would reply. "No one in Norfolk Street knows it
better; and if I were rich I should certainly employ the best models in
London; but, being poor, I have taught myself to do without them. An
occasional model would only disturb my ideal conception of the figure,
and be a positive impediment in my career. As for painting by an
artificial light," he would continue, "that is simply a knack I have
found it necessary to acquire, my days being engrossed in the work of
tuition."
At the moment when we must present him to our readers, Pitman was in his
studio alone, by the dying light of the October day. He sat (sure enough
with "unaffected simplicity") in a Windsor chair, his low-crowned black
felt hat by his side; a dark, weak, harmless, pathetic little man, clad
in the hue of mourning, his coat longer than is usual with the laity,
his neck enclosed in a collar without a parting, his neckcloth pale in
hue and simply tied; the whole outward man, except for a pointed beard,
tentatively clerical. There was a thinning on the top of Pitman's head,
there were silver hairs at Pitman's temple. Poor gentleman, he was no
longer young; and years, and poverty, and humble ambition thwarted, make
a cheerless lot.
In front of him, in the corner by the door, there stood a portly barrel;
and let him turn them where he might, it was always to the barrel that
his eyes and his thoughts returned.
"Should I open it? Should I return it? Should I communicate with Mr.
Semitopolis at once?" he wondered. "No," he concluded finally, "nothing
without Mr. Finsbury's advice." And he arose and produced a shabby
leathern desk. It opened without the formality of unlocking, and
displayed the thick cream-coloured note-paper on which Mr. Pitman was in
the habit of communicating with the proprietors of schools and the
parents of his pupils. He placed the desk on the table by the window,
and taking a saucer of Indian ink from the chimney-piece, laboriously
composed the following letter:
"My dear Mr. Finsbury," it ran, "would it be presuming on your kindness
if I asked you to pay me a visit here this evening? It is in no trifling
matter that I invoke your valuable assistance, for need I say more than
it concerns the welfare of Mr. Semitopolis's statue of Hercules? I write
you in great agitation of mind; for I have made all inquiries, and
greatly fear that this work of ancient art has been mislaid. I labour
besides under another perplexity, not unconnected with the first. Pray
excuse the inelegance of this scrawl, and believe me yours in haste,
William D. Pitman."
Armed with this he set forth and rang the bell of No. 233 King's Road,
the private residence of Michael Finsbury. He had met the lawyer at a
time of great public excitement in Chelsea; Michael, who had a sense of
humour and a great deal of careless kindness in his nature, followed the
acquaintance up, and, having come to laugh, remained to drop into a
contemptuous kind of friendship. By this time, which was four years
after the first meeting, Pitman was the lawyer's dog.
"No," said the elderly housekeeper, who opened the door in person, "Mr.
Michael's not in yet. But ye're looking terribly poorly, Mr. Pitman.
Take a glass of sherry, sir, to cheer ye up."
"No, I thank you, ma'am," replied the artist. "It is very good in you,
but I scarcely feel in sufficient spirits for sherry. Just give Mr.
Finsbury this note, and ask him to look round--to the door in the lane,
you will please tell him; I shall be in the studio all evening."
And he turned again into the street and walked slowly homeward. A
hair-dresser's window caught his attention, and he stared long and
earnestly at the proud, high-born, waxen lady in evening dress, who
circulated in the centre of the show. The artist woke in him, in spite
of his troubles.
"It is all very well to run down the men who make these things," he
cried, "but there's a something--there's a haughty, indefinable
something about that figure. It's what I tried for in my 'Empress
Eugenie,'" he added, with a sigh.
And he went home reflecting on the quality. "They don't teach you that
direct appeal in Paris," he thought. "It's British. Come, I am going to
sleep, I must wake up, I must aim higher--aim higher," cried the little
artist to himself. All through his tea and afterward, as he was giving
his eldest boy a lesson on the fiddle, his mind dwelt no longer on his
troubles, but he was rapt into the better land; and no sooner was he at
liberty than he hastened with positive exhilaration to his studio.
Not even the sight of the barrel could entirely cast him down. He flung
himself with rising zest into his work--a bust of Mr. Gladstone from a
photograph; turned (with extraordinary success) the difficulty of the
back of the head, for which he had no documents beyond a hazy
recollection of a public meeting; delighted himself by his treatment of
the collar; and was only recalled to the cares of life by Michael
Finsbury's rattle at the door.
"Well, what's wrong?" said Michael, advancing to the grate, where,
knowing his friend's delight in a bright fire, Mr. Pitman had not spared
the fuel. "I suppose you have come to grief somehow."
"There is no expression strong enough," said the artist. "Mr.
Semitopolis's statue has not turned up, and I am afraid I shall be
answerable for the money; but I think nothing of that--what I fear, my
dear Mr. Finsbury, what I fear--alas that I should have to say it!--is
exposure. The Hercules was to be smuggled out of Italy; a thing
positively wrong, a thing of which a man of my principles and in my
responsible position should have taken (as I now see too late) no part
whatever."
"This sounds like very serious work," said the lawyer. "It will require
a great deal of drink, Pitman."
"I took the liberty of--in short, of being prepared for you," replied
the artist, pointing to a kettle, a bottle of gin, a lemon, and glasses.
Michael mixed himself a grog, and offered the artist a cigar.
"No, thank you," said Pitman. "I used occasionally to be rather partial
to it, but the smell is so disagreeable about the clothes."
"All right," said the lawyer. "I am comfortable now. Unfold your tale."
At some length Pitman set forth his sorrows. He had gone to-day to
Waterloo, expecting to receive the colossal Hercules, and he had
received instead a barrel not big enough to hold Discobolus; yet the
barrel was addressed in the hand (with which he was perfectly
acquainted) of his Roman correspondent. What was stranger still, a case
had arrived by the same train, large enough and heavy enough to contain
the Hercules; and this case had been taken to an address now
undiscoverable. "The vanman (I regret to say it) had been drinking, and
his language was such as I could never bring myself to repeat. He was at
once discharged by the superintendent of the line, who behaved most
properly throughout, and is to make inquiries at Southampton. In the
meanwhile, what was I to do? I left my address and brought the barrel
home; but, remembering an old adage, I determined not to open it except
in the presence of my lawyer."
"Is that all?" asked Michael. "I don't see any cause to worry. The
Hercules has stuck upon the road. It will drop in to-morrow or the day
after; and as for the barrel, depend upon it, it's a testimonial from
one of your young ladies, and probably contains oysters."
"O, don't speak so loud!" cried the little artist. "It would cost me my
place if I were heard to speak lightly of the young ladies; and besides,
why oysters from Italy? and why should they come to me addressed in
Signor Ricardi's hand?"
"Well, let's have a look at it," said Michael. "Let's roll it forward to
the light."
The two men rolled the barrel from the corner, and stood it on end
before the fire.
"It's heavy enough to be oysters," remarked Michael judiciously.
"Shall we open it at once?" inquired the artist, who had grown decidedly
cheerful under the combined effects of company and gin; and without
waiting for a reply, he began to strip as if for a prize-fight, tossed
his clerical collar in the waste-paper basket, hung his clerical coat
upon a nail, and with a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other,
struck the first blow of the evening.
"That's the style, William Dent!" cried Michael. "There's fire for your
money! It may be a romantic visit from one of the young ladies--a sort
of Cleopatra business. Have a care and don't stave in Cleopatra's head."
But the sight of Pitman's alacrity was infectious. The lawyer could sit
still no longer. Tossing his cigar into the fire, he snatched the
instrument from the unwilling hands of the artist, and fell to himself.
Soon the sweat stood in beads upon his large, fair brow; his stylish
trousers were defaced with iron rust, and the state of his chisel
testified to misdirected energies.
A cask is not an easy thing to open, even when you set about it in the
right way; when you set about it wrongly, the whole structure must be
resolved into its elements. Such was the course pursued alike by the
artist and the lawyer. Presently the last hoop had been removed--a
couple of smart blows tumbled the staves upon the ground--and what had
once been a barrel was no more than a confused heap of broken and
distorted boards.
In the midst of these, a certain dismal something, swathed in blankets,
remained for an instant upright, and then toppled to one side and
heavily collapsed before the fire. Even as the thing subsided, an
eye-glass tingled to the floor and rolled toward the screaming Pitman.
"Hold your tongue!" said Michael. He dashed to the house door and
locked it; then, with a pale face and bitten lip, he drew near, pulled
aside a corner of the swathing blanket, and recoiled, shuddering.
There was a long silence in the studio.
"Now tell me," said Michael, in a low voice: "Had you any hand in it?"
and he pointed to the body.
The little artist could only utter broken and disjointed sounds.
Michael poured some gin into a glass. "Drink that," he said. "Don't be
afraid of me. I'm your friend through thick and thin."
Pitman put the liquor down untasted.
"I swear before God," he said, "this is another mystery to me. In my
worst fears I never dreamed of such a thing. I would not lay a finger on
a sucking infant."
"That's all square," said Michael, with a sigh of huge relief. "I
believe you, old boy." And he shook the artist warmly by the hand. "I
thought for a moment," he added with rather a ghastly smile, "I thought
for a moment you might have made away with Mr. Semitopolis."
"It would make no difference if I had," groaned Pitman. "All is at an
end for me. There's the writing on the wall."
"To begin with," said Michael, "let's get him out of sight; for to be
quite plain with you, Pitman, I don't like your friend's appearance."
And with that the lawyer shuddered. "Where can we put it?"
"You might put it in the closet there--if you could bear to touch it,"
answered the artist.
"Somebody has to do it, Pitman," returned the lawyer; "and it seems as
if it had to be me. You go over to the table, turn your back, and mix me
a grog; that's a fair division of labour."
About ninety seconds later the closet-door was heard to shut.
"There," observed Michael, "that's more home-like. You can turn now, my
pallid Pitman. Is this the grog?" he ran on. "Heaven forgive you, it's
a lemonade."
"But, O, Finsbury, what are we to do with it?" wailed the artist, laying
a clutching hand upon the lawyer's arm.
"Do with it?" repeated Michael. "Bury it in one of your flower-beds, and
erect one of your own statues for a monument. I tell you we should look
devilish romantic shovelling out the sod by the moon's pale ray. Here,
put some gin in this."
"I beg of you, Mr. Finsbury, do not trifle with my misery," cried
Pitman. "You see before you a man who has been all his life--I do not
hesitate to say it--eminently respectable. Even in this solemn hour I
can lay my hand upon my heart without a blush. Except on the really
trifling point of the smuggling of the Hercules (and even of that I now
humbly repent), my life has been entirely fit for publication. I never
feared the light," cried the little man; "and now--now----!"
"Cheer up, old boy," said Michael. "I assure you we should count this
little contretemps a trifle at the office; it's the sort of thing that
may occur to any one; and if you're perfectly sure you had no hand in
it----"
"What language am I to find----" began Pitman.
"O, I'll do that part of it," interrupted Michael, "you have no
experience. But the point is this: If--or rather since--you know nothing
of the crime, since the--the party in the closet--is neither your
father, nor your brother, nor your creditor, nor your mother-in-law, nor
what they call an injured husband----"
"O, my dear sir!" interjected Pitman, horrified.
"Since, in short," continued the lawyer, "you had no possible interest
in the crime, we have a perfectly free field before us and a safe game
to play. Indeed the problem is really entertaining; it is one I have
long contemplated in the light of an A. B. case; here it is at last
under my hand in specie; and I mean to pull you through. Do you hear
that?--I mean to pull you through. Let me see: it's a long time since I
have had what I call a genuine holiday; I'll send an excuse to-morrow to
the office. We had best be lively," he added significantly; "for we must
not spoil the market for the other man."
"What do you mean?" inquired Pitman. "What other man? The inspector of
police?"
"Damn the inspector of police!" remarked his companion. "If you won't
take the short cut and bury this in your back garden, we must find some
one who will bury it in his. We must place the affair, in short, in the
hands of some one with fewer scruples and more resources."
"A private detective, perhaps?" suggested Pitman.
"There are times when you fill me with pity," observed the lawyer. "By
the way, Pitman," he added in another key, "I have always regretted that
you have no piano in this den of yours. Even if you don't play yourself,
your friends might like to entertain themselves with a little music
while you were mudding."
"I shall get one at once if you like," said Pitman nervously, anxious to
please. "I play the fiddle a little as it is."
"I know you do," said Michael; "but what's the fiddle--above all as you
play it? What you want is polyphonic music. And I'll tell you what it
is--since it's too late for you to buy a piano I'll give you mine."
"Thank you," said the artist blankly. "You will give me yours? I am sure
it's very good in you."
"Yes, I'll give you mine," continued Michael, "for the inspector of
police to play on while his men are digging up your back garden."
Pitman stared at him in pained amazement.
"No, I'm not insane," Michael went on. "I'm playful, but quite coherent.
See here, Pitman: follow me one half minute. I mean to profit by the
refreshing fact that we are really and truly innocent; nothing but the
presence of the--you know what--connects us with the crime; once let us
get rid of it, no matter how, and there is no possible clue to trace us
by. Well, I give you my piano; we'll bring it round this very night.
To-morrow we rip the fittings out, deposit the--our friend--inside,
plump the whole on a cart, and carry it to the chambers of a young
gentleman whom I know by sight."
"Whom do you know by sight?" repeated Pitman.
"And what is more to the purpose," continued Michael, "whose chambers I
know better than he does himself. A friend of mine--I call him my friend
for brevity; he is now, I understand, in Demerara and (most likely) in
gaol--was the previous occupant. I defended him, and I got him off
too--all saved but honour; his assets were nil, but he gave me what he
had, poor gentleman, and along with the rest--the key of his chambers.
It's there that I propose to leave the piano and, shall we say,
Cleopatra?"
"It seems very wild," said Pitman. "And what will become of the poor
young gentleman whom you know by sight?"
"It will do him good," said Michael cheerily. "Just what he wants to
steady him."
"But, my dear sir, he might be involved in a charge of--a charge of
murder," gulped the artist.
"Well, he'll be just where we are," returned the lawyer. "He's innocent,
you see. What hangs people, my dear Pitman, is the unfortunate
circumstance of guilt."
"But indeed, indeed," pleaded Pitman, "the whole scheme appears to me so
wild. Would it not be safer, after all, just to send for the police?"
"And make a scandal?" inquired Michael. "'The Chelsea Mystery; alleged
innocence of Pitman'? How would that do at the Seminary?"
"It would imply my discharge," admitted the drawing-master. "I cannot
deny that."
"And besides," said Michael, "I am not going to embark in such a
business and have no fun for my money."
"O my dear sir, is that a proper spirit?" cried Pitman.
"O, I only said that to cheer you up," said the unabashed Michael.
"Nothing like a little judicious levity. But it's quite needless to
discuss. If you mean to follow my advice, come on, and let us get the
piano at once. If you don't, just drop me the word, and I'll leave you
to deal with the whole thing according to your better judgment."
"You know perfectly well that I depend on you entirely," returned
Pitman. "But O, what a night is before me with that--horror in my
studio! How am I to think of it on my pillow?"
"Well, you know, my piano will be there too," said Michael. "That'll
raise the average."
An hour later a cart came up the lane, and the lawyer's piano--a
momentous Broadwood grand--was deposited in Mr. Pitman's studio.