IN WHICH DOCTOR TOOLE, IN HIS BOOTS, VISITS MR. GAMBLE, AND SEES AN UGLY
CLIENT OF THAT GENTLEMAN'S; AND SOMETHING CROSSES AN EMPTY ROOM.
'Here's a conspiracy with a vengeance!' muttered Toole, 'if a body
could only make head or tail of it. Widow!--Eh!--We'll see: why, she's
like no woman ever _I_ saw. Mrs. Nutter, forsooth!' and he could
not forbear laughing at the conceit. 'Poor Charles! 'tis ridiculous--though
upon my life, I don't like it. It's just possible it may be all as
true as gospel--they're the most devilish looking pair I've seen
out of the dock--curse them--for many a day. I would not wonder if
they were robbers. The _widow_ looks consumedly like a man in
petticoats--hey!--devilish like. I think I'll send Moran and Brien up to
sleep to-night in the house. But, hang it! if they were, they would not
come out in the daytime to give an alarm. Hollo! Moggy, throw me out one
of them papers till I see what it's about.'
So he conned over the notice which provoked him, for he could not half
understand it, and he was very curious.
'Well, keep it safe, Moggy,' said he. 'H'm--it _does_ look like law
business, after all, and I believe it _is_. No--they're not
housebreakers, but robbers of another stamp--and a worse, I'll take my
davy.'
'See,' said he, as a thought struck him, 'throw me down both of them
papers again--there's a good girl. They ought to be looked after, I dare
say, and I'll see the poor master's attorney to-day, d'ye mind? and
we'll put our heads together--and, that's right--_relict_ indeed!'
And, with a solemn injunction to keep doors locked and windows fast, and
a nod and a wave of his hand to Mistress Moggy, and muttering half a
sentence or an oath to himself, and wearying his imagination in search
of a clue to this new perplexity, he buttoned his pocket over the legal
documents, and strutted down to the village, where his nag awaited him
saddled, and Jimmey walking him up and down before the doctor's
hall-door.
Toole was bound upon a melancholy mission that morning. But though
properly a minister of life, a doctor is also conversant with death, and
inured to the sight of familiar faces in that remarkable disguise. So he
spurred away with more coolness, though not less regret than another
man, to throw what light he could upon the subject of the inquest which
was to sit upon the body of poor Charles Nutter.
The little doctor, on his way to Ringsend, without the necessity of
diverging to the right or left, drew bridle at the door of Mr. Luke
Gamble, on the Blind Quay, attorney to the late Charles Nutter, and
jumping to the ground, delivered a rattling summons thereupon.
It was a dusty, dreary, wainscoted old house--indeed, two old houses
intermarried--with doors broken through the partition walls--the floors
not all of a level--joined by steps up and down--and having three great
staircases, that made it confusing. Through the windows it was not easy
to see, such a fantastic mapping of thick dust and dirt coated the
glass.
Luke Gamble, like the house, had seen better days. It was not his fault;
but an absconding partner had well nigh been his ruin: and, though he
paid their liabilities, it was with a strain, and left him a poor man,
shattered his connexion, and made the house too large by a great deal
for his business.
Doctor Toole came into the clerk's room, and was ushered by one of these
gentlemen through an empty chamber into the attorney's sanctum. Up two
steps stumbled the physician, cursing the house for a place where a
gentleman was so much more likely to break his neck than his fast, and
found old Gamble in his velvet cap and dressing-gown, in conference with
a hard-faced, pale, and pock-marked elderly man, squinting unpleasantly
under a black wig, who was narrating something slowly, and with effort,
like a man whose memory is labouring to give up its dead, while the
attorney, with his spectacles on his nose, was making notes. The speaker
ceased abruptly, and turned his pallid visage and jealous, oblique eyes
on the intruder.
Luke Gamble looked embarrassed, and shot one devilish angry glance at
his clerk, and then made Doctor Toole very welcome.
When Toole had ended his narrative, and the attorney read the notices
through, Mr. Gamble's countenance brightened, and darkened and
brightened again, and with a very significant look, he said to the pale,
unpleasant face, pitted with small-pox--
'M. M.,' and nodded.
His companion extended his hand toward the papers.
'Never mind,' said the attorney; 'there's that here will fix M. M. in a
mighty tight vice.'
'And who's M. M., pray?' enquired Toole.
'When were these notices served, doctor?' asked Mr. Gamble.
'Not an hour ago; but, I say, who the plague's M. M.?' answered Toole.
'M. M.,' repeated the attorney, smiling grimly on the backs of the
notices which lay on the table; 'why there's many queer things to be
heard of M. M.; and the town, and the country, too, for that matter, is
like to know a good deal more of her before long; and who served them--a
process-server, or who?'
'Why, a fat, broad, bull-necked rascal, with a double chin, and a great
round face, the colour of a bad suet-dumplin', and a black patch over
his eye,' answered Toole.
'Very like--was he alone?' said Gamble.
'No--a long, sly she-devil in black, that looked as if she'd cut your
windpipe, like a cat in the dark, as pale as paper, and mighty large,
black, hollow eyes.'
'Ay--that's it,' said Gamble, who, during this dialogue, had thrown his
morning-gown over the back of the chair, and got on his coat, and opened
a little press in the wall, from which he took his wig, and so completed
his toilet.
'That's it?' repeated Toole: 'what's it?--what's _what?_'
'Why, 'tis David O'Regan--Dirty Davy, as we call him. I never knew him
yet in an honest case; and the woman's M. M.'
'Hey! to be sure--a woman--I know--I remember; and he was on the point
of breaking out with poor Mrs. Macnamara's secret, but recovered in
time. 'That's the she fortune-teller, the witch, M. M., Mary Matchwell;
'twas one of her printed cards, you know, was found lying in Sturk's
blood. Dr. Sturk, you remember, that they issued a warrant for, against
our poor friend, you know.'
'Ay, ay--poor Charles--poor Nutter. Are you going to the inquest?' said
Gamble; and, on a sudden, stopped short, with a look of great fear, and
a little beckon of his hand forward, as if he had seen something.
There was that in Gamble's change of countenance which startled Toole,
who, seeing that his glance was directed through an open door at the
other end of the room, skipped from his chair and peeped through it.
There was nothing, however, visible but a tenebrose and empty passage.
'What did you see--eh? What frightens you?' said Toole. 'One would think
you saw Nutter--like--like.'
Gamble looked horribly perturbed at these words.
'Shut it,' said he, nearing the door, on which Toole's hand rested.
Toole took another peep, and did so.
'Why, there's nothing there--like--like the women down at the Mills
there,' continued the doctor.
'What about the women?' enquired Gamble, not seeming to know very well
what he was saying, agitated still--perhaps, intending to keep Toole
talking.
'Why, the women--the maids, you know--poor Nutter's servants, down at
the Mills. They swear he walks the house, and they'll have it they saw
him last night.'
'Pish! Sir--'tis all conceit and vapours--women's fancies--a plague o'
them all. And where's poor Mrs. Nutter?' said Gamble, clapping on his
cocked-hat, and taking his cane, and stuffing two or three bundles of
law papers into his coat pockets.
'At home--at the Mills. She slept at the village and so missed the
ghost. The Macnamaras have been mighty kind. But when the news was told
her this morning, poor thing, she would not stay, and went home; and
there she is, poor little soul, breaking her heart.'
Mr. Gamble was not ceremonious; so he just threw a cursory and anxious
glance round the room, clapped his hands on his coat pockets, making a
bunch of keys ring somewhere deep in their caverns. And all being
right--
'Come along, gentlemen,' says he, 'I'm going to lock the door;' and
without looking behind him, he bolted forth abstractedly into his dusty
ante-room.
'Get your cloak about you, Sir--remember your _cough_, you know--the air
of the streets is sharp,' said he with a sly wink, to his ugly client,
who hastily took the hint.
'Is that _coach_ at the door?' bawled Gamble to his clerks in the next
room, while he locked the door of his own snuggery behind him; and being
satisfied it was so, he conducted the party out by a side door, avoiding
the clerks' room, and so down stairs.
'Drive to the courts,' said the attorney to the coachman; and that was
all Toole learned about it that day. So he mounted his nag, and resumed
his journey to Ringsend at a brisk trot.
I suppose, when he turned the key in his door, and dropped it into his
breeches' pocket, the gentleman attorney assumed that he had made
everything perfectly safe in his private chamber, though Toole thought
he had not looked quite the same again after that sudden change of
countenance he had remarked.
Now, it was a darksome day, and the windows of Mr. Gamble's room were so
obscured with cobwebs, dust, and dirt, that even on a sunny day they
boasted no more than a dim religious light. But on this day a cheerful
man would have asked for a pair of candles, to dissipate the twilight
and sustain his spirits.
He had not been gone, and the room empty ten minutes, when the door
through which he had seemed to look on that unknown something that
dismayed him, opened softly--at first a little--then a little more--then
came a knock at it--then it opened more, and the dark shape of Charles
Nutter, with rigid features and white eye-balls, glided stealthily and
crouching into the chamber, and halted at the table, and seemed to read
the endorsements of the notices that lay there.