“'_Let me out,' said the mouse, 'I do not care for this cheese._'”
--Fables of Laetertius.
[Illustration: 9044]
ICTURE now this comedy and its actors. Fisher of the porpoise habit,
Mrs. Fisher of the puffy cheek, poor Dugald Cellarini, and these two
vast, blue-coated, thief-catching “bobbies” (as with kindly humor the
English term their police); all save Dugald looking terribly solemn and
important. He, poor man, strove hard to give the affair a lighter turn,
but what is one artist in a herd of Philistines? I was not appreciated;
that is the truth. A man may defy an empire, a papal bull, an infectious
disease, but a prejudice--never! “Constable,” says Fisher, “I have
caught him.” Both bobbies look at me with much the same depressing
glance as Fisher himself.
“Yes, sir,” says one, in what evidently was intended for a tone of
congratulation. “So I see.”
The other bobby evidently agrees with this sentiment. Wonderful
unanimity! I have noticed it in the Paris gendarmes also, the same quick
and intelligent grasp of a situation.
The latter quality was so conspicuous in my two blue-coated friends that
I named them instantly Lecoq and Holmes.
Holmes speaks next, after an impressive pause.
“What's he done?”
“That is the point,” says Fisher, in a tone of such damaging insinuation
that I am spurred to my defence.
“Exactly--what have I done?”
“He has endeavored to effect an entry into my house by removing a pane
of glass,” says Fisher.
“Pardon me; to call the attention of the servants by rapping upon a pane
of glass.”
“Come now, none of that!” says Lecoq, with such severity that I see the
situation at once. He is jealous. I have cast an imputation on some fair
housemaid--the future Mrs. Lecoq, no doubt.
“An assignation, you think?” I ask, with a reassuring smile.
“Sir!” cries Mrs. Fisher, indignantly. “It was my daughter's window you
broke!”
Shall I pose as the lover of Miss Fisher? I have heard that unmarried
English girls take strange liberties.
“Your fair daughter--” I begin.
“Is a child of fifteen,” interrupts virtuous Mrs.
Fisher, “and I am certain knows nothing of this person.”
By the expression of their intelligent countenances, Holmes and Lecoq
show their concurrence in this opinion.
“Confront her with me!” I demand, folding my arms defiantly.
It has since struck me that this was a happy inspiration, and in the
right dramatic key. Unfortunately, it requires an imaginative audience,
and I had two Fishers and two bobbies.
Rapidly I had calculated what would happen. The fair and innocent maiden
should be aroused from her virgin slumbers; with dishevelled locks, and
in a long, loose, and becoming drapery of some soft color (light blue
to harmonize with her flaxen hair, for instance), she should be led into
this chamber of the inquisition; then my eye should moisten, my voice be
as the lute of Apollo, and it would be a thousand francs to a dishonored
check that I should melt her into some soft confession. Not that I
should ask her to compromise her reputation to save me. Never, on my
honor, would I permit that. Indeed, if my plight tempted her to invent
a story she might repent of afterwards, I should disavow it with so
sincere and honest an air that my captors would exclaim together, “We
have misjudged him!”
No, I should merely persuade her to confess that a not ill-looking
foreigner had pursued her with glances of chivalrous admiration for
some days past, and that from his air of hopeless passion it was not
surprising to find him to-night tapping upon her window-pane.
Alas, that so promising a scheme should fail through the incurable
poverty of the Fisher spirit! My demand is simply ignored.
“What acquaintance have you with my daughter?” asks Mrs. Fisher, icily.
“You will respect my confidence?” I ask, earnestly.
“We shall use our discretion,” replies the virtuous lady.
“Quite so; we shall use our discretion,” repeats her unspeakable
husband.
“I am satisfied with your assurance,” I say. “The discretion of a Fisher
is equivalent to the seal of the confessional. I thank you from my
heart, and I bow to your judgment.”
“What do you know of my daughter?” Mrs. Fisher repeats, quite unmoved by
my candor.
“Madame, I was about to tell you. You asked if I was acquainted with
that charming, and, I can assure you on my honor, spotless young lady?”
“I did,” says Mrs. Fisher; “but I do not require any remarks on her
character from you, sir.”
“Pardon me; they escaped me inadvertently What I feel deeply I am
tempted to say. I do not know Miss Fisher personally. I have not yet
ventured to address a word to her, not so much as a syllable, not even
a whisper. My respect for her innocence, for her youth, for her parents,
has been too great. But this I confess: I have for days, for weeks, for
months, followed her loved figure with the eye of chaste devotion!
On her walks abroad I have been her silent, frequently her unseen,
attendant. Through every street in London I have followed the divine
Miss Fisher, as a sailor the polar star! To-night, in a moment of
madness, I approached her home; I touched her window that I might
afterwards kiss the hand that had come so near her! In my passion I
touched too hard, the pane broke, and here I stand before you!”
So completely had I been carried away on the wings of my own fancy that
once or twice in the course of this outburst I had committed myself
to more than I had any intention of avowing. Be emphatic but never
definite, is my counsel to the liar. But I had, unluckily, tied myself
to my inventions. The gestures, the intonation, the key of sentiment
were beyond criticism; but then I was addressing Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, of
Chickawungaree Villa.
They glance at one another, and Lecoq glances at them.
He, honest man, merely touches his head significantly and winks in my
direction. The Fishers are not, however, content with this charitable
criticism.
“My daughter only returned from her seminary in Switzerland four days
ago,” says Mrs. Fisher.
“And she has never visited the streets of London except in Mrs. Fisher's
company,” adds her spouse, with a look of what is either dull hatred or
impending apoplexy.
Even at that crisis my wits did not desert me.
“My faith!” I cry, “I must be mistaken! It is not, then, Miss Fisher
whom I worship! A thousand pardons, sir, and I beg of you to convey them
to the lady whom I disturbed under a misapprehension!”
At this there is a pause, nobody volunteering to run with this message
to the bedside of Miss Fisher, though I glance pointedly at Holmes,
and even make the money in my pocket jingle. At last comes a sound
of stifled air trying to force a passage through something dense.
It proceeds, I notice, from my friend Fisher. Then it becomes a more
articulate though scarcely less disagreeable noise.
“I do not believe a word you say, sir!” he booms.
“My friend, you are an agnostic,” I reply, with a smile.
Fisher only breathes with more apparent difficulty than ever. He is
evidently going to deal a heavy blow this time. It falls.
“I charge this person with being concerned in the burglary at Mrs.
Thompson's house last night, and with trying to burgle mine,” says he.
He pauses, and then delivers another:
“He has confessed to being an Italian.”
The constables prick up their ears.
“The organ-grinder!” exclaims Holmes, with more excitement than I had
thought him capable of.
“The man as made the butler drunk and gagged the cook!” cries Lecoq.
Here is a fine situation for a political fugitive! I am indignant. I am
pathetic. 'No use. I explain frankly that I came to see Mr. Hankey. That
only deepens suspicion, for it seems that the excellent Hankey inhabited
Mount Olympus House next door for only three weeks, and departed a month
ago without either paying his rent or explaining the odor of dead bodies
proceeding from his cellars. Doubtless my French friends had acted for
the best in sending me to him, but would that he had taken the trouble
to inform them of his change of address! And then, why had I ever
thought of being an Italian? It appeared now that a gentleman of that
nationality, having won the confidence of the Thompson children and the
Thompson servants by his skill upon the hand-organ, had basely misused
it in the fashion indicated by Lecoq. Certainly it was hard to see why
such a skilled artist should have returned the very next night to a
house three doors away, and then bungled his business so shamefully;
but that argument is beyond the imagination of my bobbies. In fact, they
seem only too pleased to find a thief so ready to meet them half-way.
“Thank you, sir,” says Holmes, at the conclusion of the painful scene.
“We shouldn't mind a drop.”
This means that they are about to be rewarded for their share in the
capture by a glass of Fisher's ale. And I? Well, I am not to have any
ale, but I am to accompany them to the cells, and next morning make my
appearance before the magistrate on one charge of burglary and another
of attempted burglary.
I cannot resist one parting shot at my late host.
“Yes, Fisher,” I remark, critically, showing no hurry to leave the
room, “I like that portrait of you. It has all your plain, well-fed,
plum-pudding appearance, without your unpleasant manner of breathing and
your ridiculous conversation--and it is not married to Mrs. Fisher.”
To this there is no reply. Indeed, I do not think they recovered their
senses for at least ten minutes after I left the room.
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