Mr. Darley’s establishment, ordinarily spoken of as _the_ surgery

_par excellence_, was perhaps one of the most pretending features

of the street. It asserted itself, in fact, with such a redundancy

of gilt letters and gas burners, that it seemed to say, “Really now,

you must be ill; or if you’re not, you ought to be.” It was not a

very large house, this establishment of Mr. Darley’s, but there were

at least half-a-dozen bells on the doorpost. There was Surgery; then

there was Day and Night (Gus wanted to have Morning and Afternoon,

but somebody told him it wasn’t professional); then there was besides

surgery, day, and night bells, another brilliant brass knob, inscribed

“Visitors,” and a ditto, whereon was engraved “Shop.” Though, as there

was only one small back-parlour beyond the shop into which visitors

ever penetrated, and as it was the custom for all such visitors to walk

straight through the aforesaid shop into the aforesaid parlour without

availing themselves of any bell whatever, the brass knobs were looked

upon rather in the light of a conventionality than a convenience.

But Gus said they looked like business, especially when they were

clean, which wasn’t always, as a couple of American gentlemen, friends

of Darley’s, were in the habit of squirting tobacco-juice at them from

the other side of the way, in the dusky twilight; the man who hit the

brass oftenest out of six times to be the winner, and the loser to

stand beer all the evening--that is to say, until some indefinite time

on the following morning, for Darley’s parties seldom broke up very

early; and to let the visitors out and take the morning milk in was

often a simultaneous proceeding in the household of our young surgeon.

If he had been a surgeon only, he would surely have been a Sir Benjamin

Brodie; for when it is taken into account that he could play the piano,

organ, guitar, and violoncello, without having learned any of those

instruments; that he could write a song, and compose the melody to it;

that he could draw horses and dogs after Herring and Landseer; make

more puns in one sentence than any burlesque writer living; make love

to half-a-dozen women at once, and be believed by every one of them;

sing a comic song, or tell a funny story; name the winner of the Derby

safer than any prophet on that side of the water; and make his book for

the Leger with one hand while he wrote a prescription with the other;

the discriminating reader will allow that there was a good deal of some

sort of talent or other in the composition of Mr. Augustus Darley.

In the twilight of this particular autumn evening he is busily engaged

putting up a heap of little packets labelled “Best Epsom Salts,” while

his assistant, a very small youth, of a far more elderly appearance

than his master, lights the gas. The half-glass door that communicates

with the little back parlour is ajar, and Gus is talking to some one

within.

“If I go over the water to-night, Bell--” he says.

A feminine voice from within interrupts him--“But you won’t go

to-night, Gus; the last time you went to that horrid Smasher’s, Mrs.

Tompkins’s little boy was ill, and they sent into the London Road

for Mr. Parker. And you are such a favourite with everybody, dear,

that they say if you’d only stay at home always, you’d have the best

practice in the neighbourhood.”

“But, Bell, how can a fellow stay at home night after night, and

perhaps half his time only sell a penn’orth of salts or a poor man’s

plaster? If they’d be ill,” he added, almost savagely, “I wouldn’t mind

stopping in; there’s some interest in that. Or if they’d come and have

their teeth drawn; but they never will: and I’m sure I sell ’em our

Infallible Anti-toothache Tincture; and if that don’t make ’em have

their teeth out, nothing will.”

“Come and have your tea, Gus; and tell Snix to bring his basin.”

Snix was the boy, who forthwith drew from a cupboard under the counter

the identical basin into which, when a drunken man was brought into the

shop, Gus usually bled him, with a double view of obtaining practice in

his art and bringing the patient back to consciousness.

The feminine occupant of the parlour is a young lady with dark hair and

grey eyes, and something under twenty years of age. She is Augustus

Darley’s only sister; she keeps his house, and in an emergency she

can make up a prescription--nay, has been known to draw a juvenile

patient’s first tooth, and give him his money back after the operation

for the purchase of consolatory sweetstuffs.

Perhaps Isabel Darley is just a little what very prim young

ladies, who have never passed the confines of the boarding-school

or the drawing-room, might call “fast.” But when it is taken into

consideration that she was left an orphan at an early age, that

she never went to school in her life, and that she has for a very

considerable period been in the habit of associating with her brother’s

friends, chiefly members of the Cherokee Society, it is not so much to

be wondered at that she is a little more masculine in her attainments,

and “go-ahead” in her opinions, than some others of her sex.

The parlour is small, as has before been stated. One of the Cherokees

has been known to suggest, when there were several visitors present

and the time arrived for their departure, that they should be taken

out singly with a corkscrew. Other Cherokees, arriving after the room

had been filled with visitors, had been heard to advise that somebody

should go in first with a candle, to ascertain whether vitality could

be sustained in the atmosphere. Perhaps the accommodation was not

extended by the character of the furniture, which consisted of a

cottage piano, a chair for the purposes of dental surgery, a small

Corinthian column supporting a basin with a metal plug and chain

useful for like purposes; also a violoncello in the corner, a hanging

bookshelf--(which was a torture to tall Cherokees, as one touch from

a manly head would tilt down the shelves and shower the contents

of Mr. Darley’s library on the head in question, like a literary

waterfall)--and a good-sized sofa, with that unmistakable well, and

hard back and arms, which distinguish the genus sofa-bedstead. Of

course tables, chairs, china ornaments, a plaster-of-Paris bust here

and there, caricatures on the walls, a lamp that wouldn’t burn, and a

patent arrangement for the manufacture of toasted cheese, are trifles

in the way of furniture not worth naming. Miss Darley’s birds, again,

though they did spill seed and water into the eyes of unoffending

visitors, and drop lumps of dirty sugar sharply down upon the noses of

the same, could not of course be considered a nuisance; but certainly

the compound surgery and back-parlour in the mansion of Augustus Darley

was, to say the least, a little too full of furniture.

While Isabel is pouring out the tea, two gentlemen open the shop door,

and the bell attached thereto, which should ring but doesn’t, catching

in the foremost visitor’s foot, nearly precipitates him headlong into

the emporium of the disciple of Esculapius. This foremost visitor is

no other than Mr. Peters, and the tall figure behind him, wrapped in a

greatcoat, is Daredevil Dick.

“Here I am, Gus!” he cries out, in his own bold hearty voice; “here I

am; found your place at last, in spite of the fascinations of half the

stale shell-fish in the United Kingdom. Here I am; and here’s the best

friend I have in the world, not even excepting yourself, old fellow.”

Gus introduces Richard to his sister Isabel, who has been taught from

her childhood to look upon the young man shut up in a lunatic asylum

down at Slopperton as the greatest hero, next to Napoleon Buonaparte,

that ever the world had boasted. She was a little girl of eleven years

old at the time of Dick’s trial, and had never seen her wild brother’s

wilder companion; and she looks up now at the dark handsome face with

a glance of almost reverence in her deep gray eyes. But Bell is by

no means a heroine; and she has a dozen unheroine-like occupations.

She has the tea to pour out, and in her nervous excitement she scalds

Richard’s fingers, drops the sugar into the slop-basin, and pours all

the milk into one cup of tea. What she would have done without the

assistance of Mr. Peters, it is impossible to say; for that gentleman

showed himself the very genius of order; cut thin bread-and-butter

enough for half-a-dozen, which not one of the party touched; re-filled

the tea-pot before it was empty; lit the gas-lamp which hung from the

ceiling; shut the door which communicated with the shop and the other

door which led on to the staircase; and did all so quietly that nobody

knew he was doing anything.

Poor Richard! In spite of the gratitude and happiness he feels in his

release, there is a gloom upon his brow and an abstraction in his

manner, which he tries in vain to shake off.

A small, round, chubby individual, who might be twelve or twenty,

according to the notions of the person estimating her age, removed

the tea-tray, and in so doing broke a saucer. Gus looked up. “She

always does it,” he said, mildly. “We’re getting quite accustomed to

the sound. It rather reduces our stock of china, and we sometimes are

obliged to send out to buy tea-things before we can have any breakfast;

but she’s a good girl, and she doesn’t steal the honey, or the jujubes,

or the tartaric acid out of the seidlitz-powders, as the other one did;

not that I minded that much,” he continued; “but she couldn’t read, and

she sometimes filled up the papers with arsenic for fear of being found

out; and that might have been inconvenient, if we’d ever happened to

sell them.”

“Now, Gus,” said Richard, as he drew his chair up to the fireplace

and lit his pipe--permission being awarded by Bell, who lived in one

perpetual atmosphere of tobacco-smoke--“now, Gus, I want Peters to tell

you all about this affair; how it was he thought me innocent; how he

hit upon the plan he formed for saving my neck; how he tried to cast

about and find a clue to the real murderer; how he thought he had found

a clue, and how he lost it.”

“Shall my sister stop while he tells the story?” asked Gus.

“She _is_ your sister, Gus,” answered Richard. “She cannot be so

unlike you as not to be a true and pitying friend to me. Miss Darley,”

he continued, turning towards her as he spoke, “you do not think me

quite so bad a fellow as the world has made me out; you would like to

see me righted, and my name freed from the stain of a vile crime?”

“Mr. Marwood,” the girl answered, in an earnest voice, “I have heard

your sad story again and again from my brother’s lips. Had you too been

my brother, I could not, believe me, have felt a deeper interest in

your fate, or a truer sorrow for your misfortunes. It needs but to look

into your face, or hear your voice, to know how little you deserve the

imputation that has been cast upon you.”

Richard rises and gives her his hand. No languid and lady-like

pressure, such as would not brush the down off a butterfly’s wing, but

an honest hearty grasp, that comes straight from the heart.

“And now for Mr. Peters’s story,” said Gus, “while I brew a jugful of

whisky-punch.”

“You can follow his hands, Gus?” asks Richard.

“Every twist and turn of them. He and I had many a confab about you,

old fellow, before we went out fishing,” said Gus, looking up from the

pleasing occupation of peeling a lemon.

“Now for it, then,” said Richard; and Mr. Peters accordingly began.

Perhaps, considering his retiring from the Slopperton police force

a great event, not to say a crisis, in his life, Mr. Peters had

celebrated it by another event; and, taking the tide of his affairs at

the flood, had availed himself of the water to wash his hands with.

At any rate, the digital alphabet was a great deal cleaner than when,

eight years ago, he spelt out the two words, “Not guilty,” in the

railway carriage.

There was something very strange to a looker-on in the little party,

Gus, Richard, and Bell, all with earnest eyes fixed on the active

fingers of the detective--the silence only broken by some exclamation

at intervals from one of the three.

“When first I see this young gent,” say the fingers, as Mr. Peters

designates Richard with a jerk of his elbow, “I was a-standin’ on the

other side of the way, a-waitin’ till my superior, Jinks, as was as

much up to his business as a kitting,”--(Mr. Peters has rather what we

may call a fancy style of orthography, and takes the final _g_ off

some words to clap it on to others, as his taste dictates)--“a-waitin,’

I say, till Jinks should want my assistance. Well, gents all--beggin’

the lady’s parding, as sits up so manly, with none of yer faintin’ nor

’steriky games, as I a’most forgot she was a lady--no sooner did I

clap eyes upon Mr. Marwood here, a-smokin’ his pipe, in Jinks’s face,

and a-answerin’ him sharp, and a-behavin’ what you may call altogether

cocky, than I says to myself, ‘They’ve got the wrong un’. My fust words

and my last about this ’ere gent, was, ‘They’ve got the wrong un.’”

Mr. Peters looked round at the attentive party with a glance of

triumph, rubbed his hands by way of a full-stop, and went on with his

manual recital.

“For why?” said the fingers, interrogatively, “for why did I think as

this ’ere gent was no good for this ’ere murder; for why did I think

them chaps at Slopperton had got on the wrong scent? Because he was

cheeky? Lor’ bless your precious eyes, miss” (by way of gallantry he

addresses himself here to Isabel), “not a bit of it! When a cove goes

and cuts another cove’s throat off-hand, it ain’t likely he ain’t

prepared to cheek a police-officer. But when I reckoned up this young

gent’s face, what was it I see? Why, as plain as I see his nose and

his moustachios--and he ain’t bad off for neither of them,” said the

fingers, parenthetically--“I see that he hadn’t done it. Now, a cove

what’s screwed up to face a judge and jury, maybe can face ’em, and

never change a line of his mug; but there isn’t a cove an lives as

can stand that first tap of a detective’s hand upon his shoulder as

tells him, plain as words, ‘The game is up.’ The best of ’em, and

the pluckiest of ’em, drops under that. If they keeps the colour in

their face--which some of ’em has got the power to do, and none as

never tried it on can guess the pain--if they can do that ’ere, the

perspiration breaks out wet and cold upon their for’eds, and that

blows ’em. But this young gent--he was took aback, he was surprised,

and he was riled, and used bad language; but his colour never changed,

and he wasn’t once knocked over till Jinks, unbusiness-like, told him

of his uncle’s murder, when he turned as white as that ’ere ’ed of

Bon-er-part.” Mr. Peters, for want of a better comparison, glanced in

the direction of a bust of the victor of Marengo, which, what with

tobacco-smoke and a ferocious pair of burnt cork moustachios, was by no

means the whitest object in creation.

“Now, what a detective officer’s good at, if he’s worth his salt, is

this ’ere: when he sees two here and another two there, he can put ’em

together, though they might be a mile apart to anybody not up to the

trade, and make ’em into four. So, thinks I, the gent isn’t took aback

at bein’ arrested; but he _is_ took aback when he hears as how

his uncle’s murdered. Now, if he’d committed the murder, he’d know of

it; and he might sham surprise, but he wouldn’t be surprised; and this

young gent was knocked all of a heap as genuine as----” Mr. Peters’s

ideas still revert to the bust of Napoleon--“as ever that ’ere forring

cove was, when he sees his old guard scrunched up small at the battle

of Waterloo.”

“Heaven knows, Peters,” said Richard, taking his pipe out of his mouth,

and looking up from his stooping position over the fire, “Heaven knows

you were right; I did feel my heart turn cold when I heard of that good

man’s death.”

“Well, that they’d got the wrong un I saw was as clear as daylight--but

where was the right un? That was the question! Who ever committed

the murder did it for the money in that ’ere cabinet: and sold agen

they was, whoever they was, and didn’t get the money. Who was in the

house? This young gent’s mother and the servant. I was nobody in the

Gardenford force, and I was less than nobody at Slopperton; so get into

that house at the Black Mill I couldn’t. This young gent was walked

off to jail and I was sent about my business--my orders bein’ to be

back in Gardenford that evenin’, leavin’ Slopperton by the three-thirty

train. Well, I was a little cut up about this young gent; for I seed

that the case was dead agen him; the money in his pocket--the blood on

his sleeve--a cock-and-a-bull story of a letter of introduction, and a

very evident attempt at a bolt--only enough to hang him, that’s all;

and, for all that, I had a inward conwiction that he was as hinnercent

of the murder as that ’ere plaster-of-Paris stattur.” Mr. Peters goes

regularly to the bust for comparisons, by way of saving time and

trouble in casting about for fresh ones.

“But my orders,” continued the fingers, “was positive, so I goes down

to the station to start by the three-thirty; and as I walks into the

station-yard, I hears the whistle, and sees the train go. I was too

late; and as the next train didn’t start for near upon three hours, I

thought I’d take a stroll and ’av a look at the beauties of Slopperton.

Well, I strolls on, promiscuous like, till I comes to the side of a

jolly dirty-looking river; and as by this time I feels a little dry, I

walks on, lookin’ about for a public; but ne’er a one do I see, till

I almost tumbles into a dingy little place, as looked as if it did

about half-a-pint a day reg’lar, when business was brisk. But in I

walks, past the bar; and straight afore me I sees a door as leads into

the parlour. The passage was jolly dark; and this ’ere door was ajar;

and inside I hears voices. Well, you see, business is business, and

pleasure is pleasure; but when a cove takes a pleasure in his business,

he gets a way of lettin’ his business habits come out unbeknownst when

he’s takin’ his pleasure: so I listens. Now, the voice I heerd fust was

a man’s voice; and, though the place was a sort of crib such as nobody

but navvies or such-like would be in the habit of going to, this ’ere

was the voice of a gentleman. I can’t say as I ever paid much attention

to grammar myself, though I daresay it’s very pleasant and amusin’ when

you enter into it; but, for all that, I’d knocked about in the world

long enough to know a gent’s way of speakin’ from a navvy’s, as well as

I know’d one tune on the accordion from another tune. It was a nice,

soft-spoken voice too, and quite melodious and pleasant to listen to;

but it was a-sayin’ some of the cruelest and hardest words as ever was

spoke to a woman yet by any creature with the cheek to call hisself a

man. You’re not much good, my friend, says I, with your lardy-dardy

ways and your cold-blooded words, whoever you are. You’re a thin chap,

with light hair and white hands, I know, though I’ve never seen you;

and there’s very little in the way of wickedness that you wouldn’t be

up to on a push. Now, just as I was a-thinkin’ this, he said somethin’

that sent the blood up into my face as hot as fire--‘I expected a

sum of money, and I’ve been disappointed of it,’ he said; and before

the girl he was a-talkin’ to could open her lips, he caught her up

sudden--‘Never you mind how,’ he says, ‘never you mind how.’”

“He expected a sum of money, and he’d been disappointed of it! So had

the man who had murdered this young gent’s uncle.

“Not much in this, perhaps. But why was he so frightened at the

thoughts of her asking him how he expected the money, and how he’d bin

disappointed? There it got fishy. At any rate, says I to myself, I’ll

have a look at you, my friend; so in I walks, very quiet and quite

unbeknownst. He was a-sittin’ with his back to the door, and the young

woman he was a-talkin’ to was standin’ lookin’ out of the winder; so

neither of ’em saw me. He was buildin’ up some cards into a ’ouse, and

had got ’em up very high, when I laid my hand upon his shoulder sudden.

He turned round and looked at me.” Mr. Peters’ hero paused, and looked

round at the little group, who sat watching his fingers with breathless

attention. He had evidently come to a point in his narrative.

“Now, what did I see in his face when he looked at me? Why, the very

same look that I _missed_ in the face of this young gent when

Jinks took him in the mornin’. The very same look that I’d seen in a

many faces, and never know’d it differ, whether it came one way or

another, always bein’ the same look at bottom--the look of a man as is

guilty of what will hang him and thinks that he’s found out. But as you

can’t give looks in as evidence, this wasn’t no good in a practical

way; but I says to myself, if ever there was anything certain in this

world since it was begun, I’ve come across the right un: so I sits down

and takes up a newspaper. I signified to him that I was dumb, and he

took it for granted that I was deaf as well--which was one of those

stupid mistakes your clever chaps sometimes fall into--so he went on

a-talking to the girl.

“Well, it was a old story enough, what him and the girl was talkin’ of;

but every word he said made him out a more cold-blooded villain than

the last.

“Presently he offered her some money--four sovereigns. She served

him as he ought to have been served, and threw them every one slap

in his face. One cut him over the eye; and I was glad of it. ‘You’re

marked, my man,’ thinks I, ‘and nothin’ could be handier agen I want

you.’ He picked up three of the sovereigns, but for all he could do he

couldn’t find the fourth. So he had the cut (which was a jolly deep

un) plastered up, and he went away. She stared at the river uncommon

hard, and then she went away. Now I didn’t much like the look she gave

the river, so as I had about half an hour to spare before the train

started, I followed her. I think she knew it; for presently she turned

short off into a little street, and when I turned into it after her she

wasn’t to be seen right or left.

“Well, I had but half an hour, so I thought it was no use chasin’ this

unfortunate young creature through all the twistings and turnings of

the back slums of Slopperton; so after a few minutes’ consideration, I

walked straight to the station. Hang me if I wasn’t too late for the

train again. I don’t know how it was but I couldn’t keep my mind off

the young woman, nor keep myself from wonderin’ what she was a-goin’ to

do with herself, and what she was a-goin’ to do with that ’ere baby. So

I walks back agen down by the water, and as I’d a good hour and a half

to spare, I walks a good way, thinking of the young man, and the cut on

his forehead. It was nigh upon dark by this time, and foggy into the

bargain. Maybe I’d gone a mile or more, when I comes up to a barge what

lay at anchor quite solitary. It was a collier, and there was a chap on

board, sittin’ in the stern, smokin’, and lookin’ at the water. There

was no one else in sight but him and me; and no sooner does he spy me

comin’ along the bank than he sings out--

“‘Hulloa! Have you met a young woman down that way?’

“His words struck me all of a heap somehow, comin’ so near upon what I

was a-thinkin’ of myself. I shook my head; and he said--

“‘There’s been some unfort’nate young girl down here tryin’ to dround

her baby. I see the little chap in the water, and fished him out with

my boat-hook. I’d seen the girl hangin’ about here, just as it was

a-gettin’ dark, and then I heard the splash when she threw the child

in; but the fog was too thick for me to see anything ashore by that

time.’

“The barge was just alongside the bank, and I stepped on board. Not

bein’ so fortunate as to have a voice, you know, it comes awkward with

strangers, and I was rather put to it to get on with the young man.

And didn’t he sing out loud when he came to understand I was dumb; he

couldn’t have spoke in a higher key if I’d been a forriner.

“He told me he should take the baby round to the Union; all he hoped

he said, was, that the mother wasn’t a-goin’ to do anything bad with

herself.

“I hoped not too; but I remembered that look of hers when she stood at

the window staring out at the river, and I didn’t feel very easy in my

mind about her.

“I took the poor little wet thing up in my arms. The young man had

wrapped it in an old jacket, and it was a-cryin’ piteous, and lookin’,

oh, so scared and miserable.

“Well, it may seem a queer whim, but I’m rather soft-hearted on the

subject of babies, and often had a thought that I should like to try

the power of cultivation in the way of business, and bring a child

up from the very cradle to the police detective line, to see whether

I couldn’t make that ’ere child a ornament to the force. I wasn’t a

marryin’ man, and by no means likely ever to ’av a family of my own; so

when I took up that ’ere baby in my arms, somehow or other the thought

came into my ’ed of adoptin’ him, and bringin’ of him up. So I rolled

him up in my greatcoat, and took him with me to Gardenford.”

“And a wonderful boy he is,” said Richard; “we’ll educate him, Peters,

and make a gentleman of him.”

“Wait a bit,” said the fingers very quickly; “thank you kindly, sir;

but if the police force of this ’ere country was robbed of that ’ere

boy, it would be robbed of a gem as it couldn’t afford to lose.”

“Go on, Peters; tell them the rest of your story.”

“Well, though I felt in my own mind that by one of those strange

chances which does happen in life, maybe as often as they happen in

story-books, I had fallen across the man who had committed the murder,

yet for all that I hadn’t evidence enough to get a hearin’. I got

transferred from Gardenford to Slopperton, and every leisure minute

I had I tried to come across the man I’d marked; but nowhere could I

see him, or hear of any one answering his description. I went to the

churches; for I thought him capable of anything, even to shammin’

pious. I went to the theayter, and I see a young woman accused of

poisonin’ a fam’ly, and proved innocent by a police cove as didn’t

know his business any more than a fly. I went anywhere and everywhere,

but I never see that man; and it was gettin’ uncommon near the trial

of this young gent, and nothin’ done. How was he to be saved? I

thought of it by night and thought of it by day; but work it out I

couldn’t nohow. One day I hears of an old friend of the pris’ner’s

being sup-boned-aed as witness for the crown. This friend I determined

to see; for two ’eds”--Mr. Peters looked round, as though he defied

contradiction--“shall be better than one.”

“And this friend,” said Gus, “was your humble servant; who was only too

glad to find that poor Dick had one sincere friend in the world who

believed in his innocence, besides myself.”

“Well, Mr. Darley and me,” resumed Mr. Peters, “put our ’eds together,

and we came to this conclusion, that if this young gent was mad when

he committed the murder, they couldn’t hang him, but would shut him in

a asylum for the rest of his nat’ral life--which mayn’t be pleasant in

the habstract, but which is better than hangin’, any day.”

“So you determined on proving me mad,” said Richard.

“We hadn’t such very bad grounds to go upon, perhaps, old fellow,”

replied Mr. Darley; “that brain-fever, which we thought such a

misfortune when it laid you up for three dreary weeks stood us in

good stead; we had something to go upon, for we knew we could get

you off by no other means. But to get you off this way we wanted your

assistance, and we didn’t hit upon the plan till it was too late to

get at you and tell you our scheme; we didn’t hit upon it till twelve

o’clock on the night before your trial. We tried to see your counsel;

but he had that morning left the town, and wasn’t to return till

the trial came on. Peters hung about the court all the morning, but

couldn’t see him; and nothing was done when the judge and jury took

their seats. You know the rest; how Peters caught your eye----”

“Yes,” said Dick, “and how seven letters upon his fingers told me the

whole scheme, and gave me my cue; those letters formed these two words,

‘Sham mad.’”

“And very well you did it at the short notice, Dick,” said Gus; “upon

my word, for the moment I was almost staggered, and thought, suppose

in getting up this dodge we are only hitting upon the truth, and the

poor fellow really has been driven out of his wits by this frightful

accusation?”

“A scrap of paper,” said Mr. Peters, on his active fingers, “gave the

hint to your counsel--a sharp chap enough, though a young un.”

“I can afford to reward him now for his exertions,” said Richard, “and

I must find him for that purpose. But Peters, for heaven’s sake tell us

about this young man whom you suspect to be the murderer. If I go to

the end of the world in search of him, I’ll find him, and drag him and

his villainy to light, that my name may be cleared from the foul stain

it wears.”

Mr. Peters looked very grave. “You must go a little further than the

end of this world to find him, I’m afraid, sir,” said the fingers.

“What do you say to looking for him in the next? for that’s the station

he’d started for when I last saw him; and I believe that on that line,

with the exception of now and then a cock-and-a-bull-lane ghost, they

don’t give no return tickets.”

“Dead?” said Richard. “Dead, and escaped from justice?”

“That’s about the size of it, sir,” replied Mr. Peters. “Whether he

thought as how something was up, and he was blown, or whether he was

riled past bearin’ at findin’ no money in that ’ere cabinet, I can’t

take upon myself to say; but I found him six months after the murder

out upon a heath, dead, with a laudanum-bottle a-lying by his side.”

“And did you ever find out who he was?” asked Gus.

“He was a usher, sir, at a ’cademy for young gents, and a very pious

young man he was too, I’ve heard; but for all that he murdered this

young gent’s uncle, or my name isn’t Peters.”

“Beyond the reach of justice,” said Richard; “then the truth can never

be brought to light, and to the end of my days I must bear the stigma

of a crime of which I am innocent.”

=Book the Fifth.=

THE DUMB DETECTIVE.

CHAPTER I.

THE COUNT DE MAROLLES AT HOME.

THE denizens of Friar Street and such localities, being in the habit

of waking in the morning to the odour of melted tallow and boiling

soap, and of going to sleep at night with the smell of burning bones

under their noses, can of course have nothing of an external nature

in common with the inhabitants of Park Lane and its vicinity; for

the gratification of whose olfactory nerves exotics live short and

unnatural lives, on staircases, in boudoirs, and in conservatories of

rich plate-glass and fairy architecture, where perfumed waters play in

gilded fountains through the long summer days.

It might be imagined, then, that the common griefs and vulgar

sorrows--such as hopeless love and torturing jealousy, sickness,

or death, or madness, or despair--would be also banished from the

regions of Park Lane, and entirely confined to the purlieus of Friar

Street. Any person with a proper sense of the fitness of things would

of course conclude this to be the case, and would as soon picture my

lady the Duchess of Mayfair dining on red herrings and potatoes at the

absurd hour of one o’clock p.m., or blackleading her own grate with

her own alabaster fingers, as weeping over the death of her child, or

breaking her heart for her faithless husband, just like Mrs. Stiggins,

potato and coal merchant on a small scale, or Mrs. Higgins, whose sole

revenues come from “Mangling done here.”

And it does seem hard, oh my brethren, that there should be any limit

to the magic power of gold! It may exclude bad airs, foul scents, ugly

sights, and jarring sounds; it may surround its possessors with beauty,

grace, art, luxury, and so-called pleasure; but it cannot shut out

death or care; for to these stern visitors Mayfair and St. Giles’s must

alike open their reluctant doors whenever the dreaded guests may be

pleased to call.

You do not send cards for your morning concerts, or fêtes champêtres,

or thés dansantes, to Sorrow or Sadness, oh noble duchesses and

countesses; but have you never seen their face in the crowd when you

least looked to meet them?

Through the foliage and rich blossoms in the conservatory, and through

the white damask curtains of the long French window, the autumn

sunshine comes with subdued light into a boudoir on the second floor

of a large house in Park Lane. The velvet-pile carpets in this room

and the bedchamber and dressing room adjoining, are made in imitation

of a mossy ground on which autumn leaves have fallen; so exquisite,

indeed, is the design, that it is difficult to think that the light

breeze which enters at the open window cannot sweep away the fragile

leaf, which seems to flutter in the sun. The walls are of the palest

cream-colour, embellished with enamelled portraits of Louis the

Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and the unfortunate

boy prisoner of the Temple, let into the oval panels on the four

sides of the room. Everything in this apartment, though perfect in

form and colour, is subdued and simple; there are none of the Buhl

and marqueterie cabinets, the artificial flowers, ormolu clocks,

French prints, and musical boxes which might adorn the boudoir of an

opera-dancer or the wife of a parvenu. The easy-chairs and luxurious

sofas are made of a polished white wood, and are covered with white

damask. On the marble mantelpiece there are two or three vases of the

purest and most classical forms; and these, with Canova’s bust of

Napoleon, are the only ornaments in the room. Near the fireplace, in

which burns a small fire, there is a table loaded with books, French,

English, and German, the newest publications of the day; but they

are tossed in a great heap, as if they had one by one been looked at

and cast aside unread. By this table there is a lady seated, whose

beautiful face is rendered still more striking by the simplicity of her

black dress.

This lady is Valerie de Lancy, now Countess de Marolles; for Monsieur

Marolles has expended some part of his wife’s fortune upon certain

estates in the south of France which give him the title of Count de

Marolles.

A lucky man, this Raymond Marolles. A beautiful wife, a title, and an

immense fortune are no such poor prizes in the lottery of life. But

this Raymond is a man who likes to extend his possessions; and in South

America he has established himself as a banker on a large scale, and he

has lately come over to England with his wife and son, for the purpose

of establishing a branch of this bank in London. Of course, a man with

his aristocratic connections and enormous fortune is respected and

trusted throughout the continent of South America.

Eight years have taken nothing from the beauty of Valerie de Marolles.

The dark eyes have the same fire, the proud head the same haughty

grace; but alone and in repose the face has a shadow of deep and

settled sadness that is painful to look upon, for it is the gloomy

sadness of despair. The world in which this woman lives, which knows

her only as the brilliant, witty, vivacious, and sparkling Parisian,

little dreams that she talks because she dare not think; that she is

restless and vivacious because she dare not be still; that she hurries

from place to place in pursuit of pleasure and excitement because

only in excitement, and in a life which is as false and hollow as

the mirth she assumes, can she fly from the phantom which pursues

her. O shadow that will not be driven away! O pale and pensive ghost,

that rises before us in every hour and in every scene, to mock the

noisy and tumultuous revelry which, by the rule of opposites, we call

Pleasure!--which of us is free from your haunting presence, O phantom,

whose name is The Past?

Valerie is not alone; a little boy, between seven and eight years of

age, is standing at her knee, reading aloud to her from a book of

fables.

“A frog beheld an ox----” he began. But as he read the first words the

door of the boudoir opened, and a gentleman entered, whose pale fair

face, blue eyes, light eyelashes, and dark hair and eyebrows proclaimed

him to be the husband of Valerie.

“Ah,” he said, glancing with a sneer at the boy, who lifted his

dark eyes for a moment, and then dropped them on his book with an

indifference that bespoke little love for the new-comer, “you are

teaching your child, madame. Teaching him to read? Is not that an

innovation? The boy has a fine voice, and the ear of a maestro. Let him

learn the solfeggi, and very likely one of these days he will be as

great a man as----”

Valerie looks at him with the old contempt, the old icy coldness in her

face. “Do you want anything of me this morning, monsieur?” she asked.

“No, madame. Having the entire command of your fortune, what can I ask?

A smile? Nay, madame; you keep your smiles for your son; and again,

they are so cheap in London, the smiles of beauty.”

“Then, monsieur, since you require nothing at my hands, may I ask why

you insult me with your presence?”

“You teach your son to respect--his father, madame,” said Raymond with

a sneer, throwing himself into an easy-chair opposite Valerie. “You

set the future Count de Marolles a good example. He will be a model of

filial piety, as you are of----”

“Do not fear, Monsieur de Marolles, but that one day I shall teach my

son to respect his father; fear rather lest I teach him to avenge----”

“Nay, madame, it is for you to fear that.”

During the whole of this brief dialogue, the little boy has held his

mother’s hand, looking with his serious eyes anxiously in her face.

Young as he is, there is a courage in his glance and a look of firmness

in his determined under-lip that promises well for the future. Valerie

turns from the cynical face of her husband, and lays a caressing hand

on the boy’s dark ringlets. Do those ringlets remind her of any other

dark hair? Do any other eyes look out in the light of those she gazes

at now?

“You were good enough to ask me just now, madame, the purport of my

visit; your discrimination naturally suggesting to you that there is

nothing so remarkably attractive in the society to be found in these

apartments, infantine lectures in words of one syllable included”--he

glances towards the boy as he speaks, and the cruel blue eyes are never

so cruel as when they look that way--“as to induce me to enter them

without some purpose or other.”

“Perhaps monsieur will be so good as to be brief in stating that

purpose? He may imagine, that being entirely devoted to my son, I do

not choose to have his studies, or even his amusements, interrupted.”

“You bring up young Count Almaviva like a prince, madame. It is

something to have good blood in one’s veins, even on one side----”

If she could have killed him with a look of those bright dark eyes, he

would have fallen dead as he spoke the words that struck one by one at

her broken heart. He knew his power; he knew wherein it lay, and how to

use it--and he loved to wound her; because, though he had won wealth

and rank from her, he had never conquered her, and he felt that even in

her despair she defied him.

“You are irrelevant, monsieur. Pray be so kind as to say what brought

you here, where I would not insult your good sense by saying you are a

welcome visitor.”

“Briefly then, madame. Our domestic arrangements do not please me.

We are never known to quarrel, it is true; but we are rarely seen to

address each other, and we are not often seen in public together.

Very well this in South America, where we were king and queen of our

circle--here it will not do. To say the least, it is mysterious. The

fashionable world is scandalous. People draw inferences--monsieur does

not love madame, and he married her for her money; or, on the other

hand, madame does not love monsieur, but married him because she had

some powerful _motive_ for so doing. This will not do, countess.

A banker must be respectable, or people may be afraid to trust him.

I must be, what I am now called, ‘the eminent banker;’ and I must be

universally trusted.”

“That you may the better betray, monsieur; that is the motive for

winning people’s confidence, in your code of moral economy, is it not?”

“Madame is becoming a logician; her argument by induction does her

credit.”

“But, your business, monsieur?”

“Was to signify my wish, madame, that we should be seen oftener

together in public. The Italian Opera, now, madame, though you have

so great a distaste for it--a distaste which, by the bye, you did not

possess during the early period of your life--is a very popular resort.

All the world will be there to-night, to witness the _début_ of a

singer of continental celebrity. Perhaps you will do me the honour to

accompany me there?”

“I do not take any interest, monsieur----”

“In the fortunes of tenor singers. Ah, how completely we outlive the

foolish fancies of our youth! But you will occupy the box on the grand

tier of her Majesty’s Theatre, which I have taken for the season. It

is to your son’s--to Cherubino’s interest, for you to comply with my

request.” He glances towards the boy once more, with a sneer on his

thin lips, and then turns and bows to Valerie, as he says--

“_Au revoir_, madame. I shall order the carriage for eight

o’clock.”

A horse, which at a sale at Tattersall’s had attracted the attention of

all the votaries of the Corner, for the perfection of his points and

the enormous price which he realized, caracoles before the door, under

the skilful horsemanship of a well-trained and exquisitely-appointed

groom. Another horse, equally high-bred, waits for his rider, the

Count de Marolles. The groom dismounts, and holds the bridle, as

the gentleman emerges from the door and springs into the saddle. A

consummate horseman the Count de Marolles; a handsome man too, in spite

of the restless and shifting blue eyes and the thin nervous lips. His

dress is perfect, just keeping pace with the fashion sufficiently to

denote high ton in the wearer, without outstripping it, so as to stamp

him a parvenu. It has that elegant and studious grace which, to a

casual observer, looks like carelessness, but which is in reality the

perfection of the highest art of all--the art of concealing art.

It is only twelve o’clock, and there are not many people of any

standing in Piccadilly this September morning; but of the few

gentlemen on horseback who pass Monsieur de Marolles, the most

aristocratic-looking bow to him. He is well-known in the great world

as the eminent banker, the owner of a superb house in Park Lane. He

possesses a man cook of Parisian renown, who wears the cross of the

Legion of Honour, given him by the first Napoleon on the occasion

of a dinner at Talleyrand’s. He has estates in South America and in

France; a fortune, said to be boundless, and a lovely wife. For the

rest, if his own patent of nobility is of rather fresh date, and if, as

impertinent people say, he never had a grandfather, or indeed anything

in the way of a father to speak of, it must be remembered that great

men, since the days of mythic history, have been celebrated for being

born in rather an accidental manner.

But why a banker? Why, possessed of an enormous fortune, try to extend

that fortune by speculation? That question lies between Raymond de

Marolles and his conscience. Perhaps there are no bounds to the

ambition of this man, who entered Paris eight years ago an obscure

adventurer, and who, according to some accounts, is now a millionaire.

CHAPTER II.

MR. PETERS SEES A GHOST.

MR. PETERS, pensioned off by Richard’s mother with an income of a

hundred pounds a year, has taken and furnished for himself a small

house in a very small square not far from Mr. Darley’s establishment,

and rejoicing in the high-sounding address of Wellington Square,

Waterloo Road. Having done this, he feels that he has nothing more to

do in life than to retire upon his laurels, and enjoy the _otium cum

dignitate_ which he has earned so well.

Of course Mr. Peters, as a single man, cannot by any possibility _do

for_ himself; and as--having started an establishment of his own--he

is no longer in a position to be taken in and done for, the best thing

he can do is to send for Kuppins; accordingly he does send for Kuppins.

Kuppins is to be cook, housekeeper, laundress, and parlourmaid all in

one; and she is to have ten pounds per annum, and her tea, sugar, and

beer--wages only known in Slopperton in very high and aristocratic

families where footmen are kept and no followers or Sundays out allowed.

So Kuppins comes to London, bringing the “fondling” with her; and

arriving at the Euston Square station at eight o’clock in the evening,

is launched into the dazzlingly bewildering gaiety of the New Road.

Well, it is not paved with gold certainly, this marvellous city; and it

is, maybe, on the whole, just a little muddy. But oh, the shops--what

emporiums of splendour! What delightful excitement in being nearly run

over every minute!--to say nothing of that delicious chance of being

knocked down by the crowd which is collected round a drunken woman

expostulating with a policeman. Of course there must be a general

election, or a great fire, or a man hanging, or a mad ox at large, or a

murder just committed in the next street, or something wonderful going

on, or there never could be such crowds of excited pedestrians, and

such tearing and rushing, and smashing of cabs, carts, omnibuses, and

parcel-delivery vans, all of them driven by charioteers in the last

stage of insanity, and drawn by horses as wild as that time-honoured

steed employed in the artistic and poetical punishment of our old

friend Mazeppa. Tottenham Court Road! What a magnificent promenade!

Occupied, of course, by the houses of the nobility! And is that

magnificent establishment with the iron shutters Buckingham Palace or

the Tower of London? Kuppins inclines to thinking it must be the Tower

of London, because the iron shutters look so warlike, and are evidently

intended as a means of defence in case of an attack from the French.

Kuppins is told by her escort, Mr. Peters, that this is the emporium of

Messrs. Shoolbred, haberdashers and linendrapers. She thinks she must

be dreaming, and wants to be pinched and awakened before she proceeds

any further. It is rather a trying journey for Mr. Peters; for Kuppins

wants to stop the cab every twenty yards or so, to get out and look at

something in this wonderful Tottenham Court Road.

But the worst of Kuppins, perhaps, is, that she has almost an insane

desire to see that Tottenham Court whence Tottenham Court Road derives

its name; and when told that there is no such place, and never

was--leastways, never as Mr. Peters heard of--she begins to think

London, in spite of all its glories, rather a take-in. Then, again,

Kuppins is very much disappointed at not passing either Westminster

Abbey or the Bank of England, which she had made up her mind were both

situated at Charing Cross; and it was a little trying for Mr. Peters

to be asked whether every moderate-sized church they passed was St.

Paul’s Cathedral, or every little bit of dead wall Newgate. To go over

a bridge, and for it not to be London Bridge, but Waterloo Bridge,

was in itself a mystery; but to be told that the Shot Tower on the

Surrey side was not the Monument was too bewildering for endurance.

As to the Victoria Theatre, which was illuminated to such a degree

that the box-entrance seemed as a pathway to fairyland, Kuppins was so

thoroughly assured in her own mind of its being Drury Lane and nothing

else, unless, perhaps, the Houses of Parliament or Covent Garden--that

no protestations on Mr. Peters’s fingers could root out the fallacy.

But the journey came to an end at last; and Kuppins, safe with bag

and baggage at No. 17, Wellington Square, partook of real London

saveloys and real London porter with Mr. Peters and the “fondling,” in

an elegant front parlour, furnished with a brilliantly polished but

rather rickety Pembroke table, that was covered with a Royal Stuart

plaid woollen cloth; half-a-dozen cane-seated chairs, so new and highly

polished as to be apt to adhere to the garments of the person who so

little understood their nature or properties as to attempt to sit upon

them; a Kidderminster carpet, the pattern of which was of the size

adapted to the requirements of a town hall, but which looked a little

disproportionate to Mr. Peters’s apartment, two patterns and a quarter

stretching the entire length of the room; and a mantelpiece ornamented

with a looking-glass divided into three compartments by gilded

Corinthian pillars, and further adorned with two black velvet kittens,

one at each corner, and a parti-coloured velvet boy on a brown velvet

donkey in the centre.

The next morning Mr. Peters announced his intention of taking the

“fondling” into the city of London, for the purpose of showing him

the outside of St. Paul’s, the Monument, Punch and Judy, and other

intellectual exhibitions adapted to his tender years. Kuppins was for

starting then and there on a visit to the pig-faced lady, than which

magnificent creature she could not picture any greater wonder in the

whole metropolis; but Kuppins had to stay at home in her post of

housekeeper, and to inspect and arrange the domestic machinery of No.

17, Wellington Square. So the “fondling,” being magnificently arrayed

in a clean collar and a pair of boots that were too small for him, took

hold of his protector’s hand, and they sallied forth.

If anything, Punch and Judy bore off the palm in this young gentleman’s

judgment of the miracles of the big village.

It was not so sublime a sight, perhaps, as the outside of St. Paul’s;

but, on the other hand, it was a great deal cleaner; and the “fondling”

would have liked to have seen Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece picked

out with a little fresh paint before he was called upon to admire it.

The Monument, no doubt, was very charming in the abstract; but unless

he could have been perpetually on the top of it, and perpetually within

a hair’s breadth of precipitating himself on to the pavement below, it

wasn’t very much in his way. But Punch, with his delightfully original

style of elocution, his overpoweringly comic domestic passages with

Judy, and the dolefully funny dog with a frill round his neck and an

evident dislike for his profession--this, indeed, was an exhibition to

be seen continually, and to be more admired the more continually seen,

as no doubt the “fondling” would have said had he been familiar with

Dr. Johnson, which, it is to be hoped, for his own peace of mind, he

wasn’t.

It is rather a trying day for Mr. Peters, and he is not sorry when,

at about four o’clock in the afternoon, he has taken the “fondling”

all round the Bank of England--(that young gentleman insisting on

peering in at the great massive windows, in the fond hope of seeing

the money)--and has shown him the broad back of the Old Lady of

Threadneedle Street, and the Clearing-house, and they are going out of

Lombard Street, on their way to an omnibus which will take them home.

But just as they are leaving the street the “fondling” makes a dead

stop, and constrains Mr. Peters to do the same.

Standing before the glass doors of a handsome building, which a brass

plate announces to be the “Anglo-Spanish-American Bank,” are two

horses, and a groom in faultless buckskins and tops. He is evidently

waiting for some one within the bank, and the “fondling” vehemently

insists upon waiting too, to see the gentleman get on horseback. The

good-natured detective consents; and they loiter about the pavement for

some time before the glass doors are flung open by a white-neckclothed

clerk, and a gentleman of rather foreign appearance emerges therefrom.

There is nothing particularly remarkable in this gentleman. The fit of

his pale lavender gloves is certainly exquisite; the style of his dress

is a recommendation to his tailor; but what there is in his appearance

to occasion Mr. Peters’s holding on to a lamp-post it is difficult to

say. But Mr. Peters did certainly cling to the nearest lamp-post, and

did certainly turn as white as the whitest sheet of paper that ever

came out of a stationer’s shop. The elegant-looking gentleman, who

was no other than the Count de Marolles, had better occupation for

his bright blue eyes than the observation of such small deer as Mr.

Peters and the “fondling.” He mounted his horse, and rode slowly away,

quite unconscious of the emotion his appearance had occasioned in the

breast of the detective. No sooner had he done so, than Mr. Peters,

relinquishing the lamp-post and clutching the astonished “fondling,”

darted after him. In a moment he was in the crowded thoroughfare before

Guildhall. An empty cab passed close to them. He hailed it with frantic

gesticulations, and sprang in, still holding the “fondling.” The Count

de Marolles had to rein-in his horse for a moment from the press of

cabs and omnibuses; and at Mr. Peters’s direction the “fondling”

pointed him out to the cabman, with the emphatic injunction to “follow

that gent, and not to lose sight of him nohow.” The charioteer gives a

nod, cracks his whip, and drives slowly after the equestrian, who has

some difficulty in making his way through Cheapside. The detective,

whose complexion still wears a most striking affinity to writing-paper,

looks out of the window, as if he thought the horseman they are

following would melt into thin air, or go down a trap in St. Paul’s

Churchyard. The “fondling” follows his protector’s eyes with his eyes,

then looks back at Mr. Peters, and evidently does not know what to make

of the business. At last his patron draws his head in at the window,

and expresses himself upon his fingers thus--

“How can it be him, when he’s dead?”

This is beyond the “fondling’s” comprehension, who evidently doesn’t

understand the drift of the query, and as evidently doesn’t altogether

like it, for he says--

“Don’t! Come, I say, don’t, now.”

“How can it be him,” continues Mr. Peters, enlarging upon the question,

“when I found him dead myself out upon that there heath, and took him

back to the station, and afterwards see him buried, which would have

been between four cross roads with a stake druv’ through him if he’d

poisoned himself fifty years ago?”

This rather obscure speech is no more to the “fondling’s” liking than

the last, for he cries out more energetically than before--

“I say, now, I tell you I don’t like it, father. Don’t you try it on

now, please. What does it mean? Who’s been dead fifty years ago, with a

stake druv’ through ’em, and four cross roads on a heath? Who?”

Mr. Peters puts his head out of the window, and directing the attention

of the “fondling” to the elegant equestrian they are following, says,

emphatically, upon his fingers--

“Him!”

“Dead, is he?” said the “fondling,” clinging very close to his adopted

parent. “Dead! and very well he looks, considerin’; but,” he continued,

in an awful and anxious whisper, “where’s the stake and the four cross

roads as was druv’ through him? Does he wear that ’ere loose coat to

hide ’em?”

Mr. Peters didn’t answer this inquiry, but seemed to be ruminating,

and, if one may be allowed the expression, thought aloud upon his

fingers, as it was his habit to do at times.

“There couldn’t be two men so much alike, surely. That one I found

dead was the one I saw at the public talkin’ to the young woman; and

if so, this is another one, for that one was dead as sure as eggs

is eggs. When eggs ceases to be eggs, which,” continued Mr. Peters,

discursively, “considerin’ they’re sellin’ at twenty for a shilling,

French, and dangerous, if you’re not partial to young parboiled

chickens, is not likely yet awhile, why, _then_, that one I found

on the heath will come to life again.”

The “fondling” was too busy stretching his neck out of the window of

the cab, in his eagerness to keep his eye upon the Count de Marolles,

to pay any attention to Mr. Peters’s fingers. The outside of St.

Paul’s, and the performance of Punch and Judy, were very well in their

way, but they were mild dissipations indeed, compared to the delight of

following a ghost which had had a stake driven through his phantasmal

form and wore lavender kid gloves.

“There was one thing,” continued the musing detective, “which struck

me as curious, when I found the body of that young gent. Where was

the scar from the sovering as that young woman throwed at him?

Why nowheres! Not a trace of it to be seen, which I looked for it

particular; and yet that cut wasn’t one to leave a scar that would

wear out in six months, nor yet in six years either. I’ve had my face

scratched myself, though I’m a single man, and I know what that is to

last, and the awkwardness one has to go through in saying one’s been

playing with spiteful kittens, and such-like. But what’s that to a cut

half a inch deep from the sharp edge of a sovering? If I could but get

to see his forehead. The cut was just over his eyebrow, and I could see

the mark of it with his hat on.”

While Mr. Peters abandons himself to such reflections as these, the cab

drives on and follows the Count de Marolles down Ludgate Hill, through

Fleet Street and the Strand, Charing Cross and Pall Mall, St. James’s

Street and Piccadilly, till it comes up with him at the corner of Park

Lane.

“This,” says Mr. Peters, “is where the swells live. Very likely he

hangs out here; he’s a-ridin’ as if he was goin’ to stop presently, so

we’ll get out.” Whereupon the “fondling” interprets to the cabman Mr.

Peters’s wish to that effect, and they alight from the vehicle.

The detective’s surmise is correct. The Count stops, gets off his

horse, and throws the reins to the groom. It happens at this very

moment that an open carriage, in which two ladies are seated, passes

on its way to the Grosvenor Gate. One of the ladies bows to the

South-American banker, and as he lifts his hat in returning her salute,

Mr. Peters, who is looking at nothing particular, sees very distinctly

the scar which is the sole memorial of that public-house encounter on

the banks of the Sloshy.

As Raymond throws the reins to the groom he says, “I shall not ride

again to-day, Curtis. Tell Morgan to have the Countess’s carriage at

the door at eight for the opera.”

Mr. Peters, who doesn’t seem to be a person blest with the faculty of

hearing, but who is, to all appearance, busily engaged in drawing the

attention of the “fondling” to the architectural beauties of Grosvenor

Gate, may nevertheless take due note of this remark.

The elegant banker ascends the steps of his house, at the hall-door of

which stand gorgeous and obsequious flunkeys, whose liveries and legs

alike fill with admiration the juvenile mind of the “fondling.”

Mr. Peters is very grave for some time, as they walk away; but at last,

when they have got half-way down Piccadilly, he has recourse once more

to his fingers, and addresses his young friend thus:

“What did you think of him, Slosh?”

“Which,” says the “fondling;” “the cove in the red velvet breeches as

opened the door, or the swell ghost?”

“The swell.”

“Well, I think he’s uncommon handsome, and very easy in his manners,

all things taken into consideration,” said that elderly juvenile with

deliberation.

“Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?”

Slosh repeats that he does.

Mr. Peters’s gravity increases every moment. “Oh, you do, do you,

Slosh?” he asks again, and again the boy answers. At last, to the

considerable inconvenience of the passers-by, the detective makes a

dead stop, and says, “I’m glad you think him han’some, Slosh; and

I’m glad you thinks him easy, which, all things considered, he is,

uncommon. In fact, I’m glad he meets your views as far as personal

appearance goes, because, between you and me, Slosh, that man’s your

father.”

It is the boy’s turn to hold on to the lamp-post now. To have a ghost

for a father, and, as Slosh afterwards remarked, “a ghost as wears

polishy boots, and lives in Park Lane, too,” was enough to take the

breath out of any boy, however preternaturally elderly and superhumanly

sharp his police-office experiences may have made him. On the whole,

the “fondling” bears the shock very well, shakes off the effect of the

information, and is ready for more in a minute.

“I wouldn’t have you mention it just now, you know, Slosh,” continues

Mr. Peters, “because we don’t know what he may turn out, and whether

he may quite answer our purpose in the parental line. There’s a little

outstanding matter between me and him that I shall have to look him up

for. I may want your help; and if I do, you’ll give it faithful, won’t

you, Slosh?”

“Of course I will,” said that young gentleman. “Is there any reward

out for him, father?” He always called Mr. Peters father, and wasn’t

prepared to change his habit in deference to any ghostly phenomenon

in the way of a parent suddenly turning up in Lombard Street. “Is

there any reward out for him?” he asks, eagerly; “bankers is good for

something in the levanting line, I know, nowadays.”

The detective looked at the boy’s sharp thin features with a

scrutinising glance common to men of his profession.

“Then you’ll serve me faithful, if I want you, Slosh? I thought perhaps

you might let family interests interfere with business, you know.”

“Not a bit of it,” said the youthful enthusiast. “I’d hang my

grandmother for a sovering, and the pride of catching her, she was a

downy one.”

“Chips of old blocks is of the same wood, and it’s only reasonable

there should be a similarity in the grain,” mused Mr. Peters, as he

and the “fondling” rode home in an omnibus. “I thought I’d make him

a genius, but I didn’t know there was such a under-current of his

father. It’ll make him the glory of his profession. Soft-heartedness

has been the ruin of many a detective as has had the brains to work out

a deep-laid game, but not the heart to carry it through.”

CHAPTER III.

THE CHEROKEES MARK THEIR MAN.

HER Majesty’s Theatre is peculiarly brilliant this evening. Diamonds

and beauty, in tier above tier, look out from the amber-curtained

boxes. The stalls are full, and the pit is crammed. In fop’s alley

there is scarcely standing room; indeed, one gentleman remarks to

another, that if Pandemonium is equally hot and crowded, he will turn

Methodist parson in his old age, and give his mind to drinking at

tea-meetings.

The gentleman who makes this remark is neither more nor less than a

distinguished member of the “Cheerfuls,” the domino-player alluded to

some chapters back.

He is standing talking to Richard; and to see him now, with an

opera-glass in his hand, his hair worn in a manner conforming with

the usages of society, and only in a modified degree suggesting that

celebrated hero of the Newgate calendar and modern romance, Mr. John

Sheppard, a dress-coat, patent leather boots, and the regulation white

waistcoat, you would think he had never been tipsy or riotous in his

life.

This gentleman is Mr. Percy Cordonner. All the Cherokees are more or

less literary, and all the Cherokees have, more or less, admission

to every place of entertainment, from Her Majesty’s Theatre to the

meetings of the members of the “P.R.” But what brings Richard to

the Opera to-night? and who is that not very musical-looking little

gentleman at his elbow?

“Will they all be here?” asked Dick of Mr. Cordonner.

“Every one of them; unless Splitters is unable to tear himself away

from his nightly feast of blood and blue fire at the Vic. His piece has

been performed fourteen times, and it’s my belief he’s been at every

representation; and that he tears his hair when the actors leave out

the gems of the dialogue and drop their h’s. They _do_ drop their

h’s over the water,” he continues, lapsing into a reverie; “when our

compositors are short of type, they go over and sweep them up.”

“You’re sure they’ll be here, then, Percy?”

“Every one of them, I tell you. I’m whipper-in. They’re to meet at

the oyster shop in the Haymarket; you know the place, where there’s a

pretty girl and fresh Colchesters, don’t charge you anything extra for

the lemon, and you can squeeze her hand when she gives you the change.

They’re sure to come in here two at a time, and put their mark upon the

gentleman in question. Is he in the house yet, old fellow?”

Richard turns to the quiet little man at his elbow, who is our old

friend Mr. Peters, and asks him a question: he only shakes his head in

reply.

“No, he’s not here yet,” says Dick; “let’s have a look at the stage,

and see what sort of stuff this Signor Mosquetti is made of.”

“I shall cut him up, on principle,” says Percy; “and the better he is,

the more I shall cut him up, on another principle.”

There is a great deal of curiosity about this new tenor of continental

celebrity. The opera is the _Lucia_, and the appearance of

Edgardo is looked forward to with anxiety. Presently the hero of the

square-cut coat and jack-boots enters. He is a handsome fellow, with a

dark southern face, and an easy insouciant manner. His voice is melody

itself; the rich notes roll out in a flood of sweetness, without the

faintest indication of effort. Though Richard pretends to look at the

stage, though perhaps he does try to direct his attention that way,

his pale face, his wandering glance, and his restless under-lip, show

him to be greatly agitated. He is waiting for that moment when the

detective shall say to him, “There is the murderer of your uncle. There

is the man for whose guilt you have suffered, and must suffer, till he

is brought to justice.” The first act of the opera seemed endless to

Daredevil Dick; while his philosophical friend, Mr. Cordonner, looked

on as coolly as he would have done at an earthquake, or the end of the

world, or any other trifling event of that nature.

The curtain has fallen upon the first act, when Mr. Peters lays his

hand on Richard’s arm and points to a box on the grand tier.

A gentleman and lady, and a little boy, have just taken their seats.

The gentleman, as becomes him, sits with his back to the stage and

faces the house. He lifts his opera-glass to take a leisurely survey

of the audience. Percy puts his glass into Richard’s hand, and with a

hearty “Courage, old boy!” watches him as he looks for the first time

at his deadliest enemy.

And is that calm, aristocratic, and serene face the face of a murderer?

The shifting blue eyes and the thin arched lips are not discernible

from this distance; but through the glass the general effect of the

face is very plainly seen, and there is no fear that Richard will fail

to know its owner again, whenever and wherever he may meet him.

Mr. Cordonner, after a deliberate inspection of the personal

attractions of the Count de Marolles, remarks, with less respect than

indifference.

“Well, the beggar is by no means bad-looking, but he looks a

determined scoundrel. He’d make a first-rate light-comedy villain for

a Porte-St.-Martin drama. I can imagine him in Hessian boots poisoning

all his relations, and laughing at the police when they come to arrest

him.”

“Shall you know him again, Percy?” asks Richard.

“Among an army of soldiers, every one of them dressed in the same

uniform,” replies his friend. “There’s something unmistakable about

that pale thin face. I’ll go and bring the other fellows in, that they

may all be able to swear to him when they see him.”

In groups of two and three the Cherokees strolled into the pit, and

were conducted by Mr. Cordonner--who, to serve a friend, could, on a

push, be almost active--to the spot where Richard and the detective

stood. One after another they took a long look, through the most

powerful glass they could select, at the tranquil features of Victor de

Marolles.

Little did that gentleman dream of this amateur band of police, formed

for the special purpose of the detection of the crime he was supposed

to have committed.

One by one the “Cheerfuls” register the Count’s handsome face upon

their memories, and with a hearty shake of the hand each man declares

his willingness to serve Richard whenever and wherever he may see a

chance, however faint or distant, of so doing.

And all this time the Count is utterly unmoved. Not quite so unmoved

though, when, in the second act, he recognizes in the Edgardo--the new

tenor, the hero of the night--his old acquaintance of the Parisian

Italian Opera, the chorus-singer and mimic, Monsieur Paul Moucée. This

skilful workman does not care about meeting with a tool which, once

used, were better thrown aside and for ever done away with. But this

Signor Paolo Mosquetti is neither more nor less than the slovenly,

petit-verre-drinking, domino-playing chorus-singer, at a salary of

thirty francs a week. His genius, which enabled him to sing an aria

in perfect imitation of the fashionable tenor of the day, has also

enabled him, with a little industry, and a little less wine-drinking

and gambling, to become a fashionable tenor himself, and Milan, Naples,

Vienna, and Paris testify to his triumphs.

And all this time Valerie de Marolles looks on a stage such as that

on which, years ago, she so often saw the form she loved. That faint

resemblance, that likeness in his walk, voice, and manner, which Moucée

has to Gaston de Lancy strikes her very forcibly. It is no great

likeness, except when the mimic is bent on representing the man he

resembles; then, indeed, as we know, it is remarkable. But at any time

it is enough to strike a bitter pang to this bereaved and remorseful

heart, which in every dream and every shadow is only too apt to recall

that unforgotten past.

The Cherokees meanwhile express their sentiments pretty freely about

Monsieur Raymond de Marolles, and discuss divers schemes for the

bringing of him to justice. Splitters, whose experiences as a dramatic

writer suggested to him every possible kind of mode but a natural one,

proposed that Richard should wait upon the Count, when convenient, at

the hour of midnight, disguised as his uncle’s ghost, and confound

the villain in the stronghold of his crime--meaning Park Lane. This

sentence was verbatim from a playbill, as well as the whole very

available idea; Mr. Splitters’s notions of justice being entirely

confined to the retributive or poetical, in the person of a gentleman

with a very long speech and two pistols.

“The Smasher’s outside,” said Percy Cordonner. “He wants to have a look

at our friend as he goes out, that he may reckon him up. You’d better

let him go into the Count’s peepers with his left, Dick, and damage his

beauty; it’s the best chance you’ll get.”

“No, no; I tell you, Percy, that man shall stand where I stood. That

man shall drink to the dregs the cup I drank, when I stood in the

criminal dock at Slopperton and saw every eye turned towards me with

execration and horror, and knew that my innocence was of no avail to

sustain me in the good opinion of one creature who had known me from my

very boyhood.”

“Except the ‘Cheerfuls,’” said Percy. “Don’t forget the ‘Cheerfuls.’”

“When I do, I shall have forgotten all on this side of the grave, you

may depend, Percy. No; I have some firm friends on earth, and here is

one;” and he laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Peters, who still

stood at his elbow.

The opera was concluded, and the Count de Marolles and his lovely wife

rose to leave their box. Richard, Percy, Splitters, two or three more

of the Cherokees, and Mr. Peters left the pit at the same time, and

contrived to be at the box-entrance before Raymond’s party came out.

At last the Count de Marolles’ carriage was called; and as it drew up,

Raymond descended the steps with his wife on his arm, her little boy

clinging to her left hand.

“She’s a splendid creature,” said Percy; “but there’s a spice of

devilry in those glorious dark eyes. I wouldn’t be her husband for a

trifle, if I happened to offend her.”

As the Count and Countess crossed from the doors of the opera-house

to their carriage, a drunken man came reeling past, and before the

servants or policemen standing by could interfere, stumbled against

Raymond de Marolles, and in so doing knocked his hat off. He picked it

up immediately, and, muttering some unintelligible apology, returned it

to Raymond, looking, as he did so, very steadily in the face of M. de

Marolles. The occurrence did not occupy a moment, and the Count was too

finished a gentleman to make any disturbance. This man was the Smasher.

As the carriage drove off, he joined the group under the colonnade,

perfectly sober by this time.

“I’ve had a jolly good look at him, Mr. Marwood,” he said, “and I’d

swear to him after forty rounds in the ring, which is apt sometimes to

take a little of the Cupid out of a gent. He’s not a bad-looking cove

on the whole, and looks game. He’s rather slight built, but he might

make that up in science, and dance a pretty tidy quadrille round the

chap he was put up agin, bein’ active and lissom. I see the cut upon

his forehead, Mr. Peters, as you told me to take notice of,” he said,

addressing the detective. “He didn’t get that in a fair stand-up fight.

leastways not from an Englishman. When you cross the water for your

antagonist, you don’t know what you may get.”

“He got it from an Englishwoman, though,” said Richard.

“Did he, now? Ah, that’s the worst of the softer sect; you see, sir,

you never know where they’ll have you. They’re awful deficient in

science, to be sure; but, Lord bless you, they make it up with the

will,” and the Left-handed one rubbed his nose. He had been married

during his early career, and was in the habit of saying that ten

rounds inside the ropes was a trifle compared with one round in your

own back-parlour, when your missus had got your knowledge-box in

chancery against the corner of the mantelpiece, and was marking a dozen

different editions of the ten commandments on your complexion with her

bunch of fives.

“Come, gentlemen,” said the hospitable Smasher, “what do you say to

a Welsh rarebit and a bottle of bitter at my place? We’re as full as

we can hold down stairs, for the Finsbury Fizzer’s trainer has come

up from Newmarket; and his backers is hearin’ anecdotes of his doings

for the last interesting week. They talk of dropping down the river on

Tuesday for the great event between him and the Atlantic Alligator,

and the excitement’s tremendous; our barmaid’s hands is blistered with

working at the engines. So come round and see the game, gentlemen; and

if you’ve any loose cash you’d like to put upon the Fizzer I can get

you decent odds, considerin’ he’s the favourite.”

Richard shook his head. He would go home to his mother, he said; he

wanted to talk to Peters about the day’s work. He shook hands heartily

with his friends, and as they strolled off to the Smasher’s, walked

with them as far as Charing Cross, and left them at the corner that led

into quiet Spring Gardens.

In the club-room of the Cherokees that night the members renewed the

oath they had taken on the night of Richard’s arrival, and formally

inaugurated themselves as “Daredevil Dick’s secret police.”

CHAPTER IV.

THE CAPTAIN, THE CHEMIST, AND THE LASCAR.

IN the drawing-room of a house in a small street leading out of Regent

Street are assembled, the morning after this opera-house rencontre,

three people. It is almost difficult to imagine three persons more

dissimilar than those who compose this little group. On a sofa near the

open window, at which the autumn breeze comes blowing in over boxes of

dusty London flowers, reclines a gentleman, whose bronzed and bearded

face, and the military style even of the loose morning undress which

he wears, proclaim him to be a soldier. A very handsome face it is,

this soldier’s, although darkened not a little by a tropical sun, and a

good deal shrouded by the thick black moustache and beard which conceal

the expression of the mouth, and detract from the individuality of the

face. He is smoking a long cherry-stemmed pipe, the bowl of which rests

on the floor. A short distance from the sofa on which he is lying, an

Indian servant is seated on the carpet, who watches the bowl of the

pipe, ready to replenish it the moment it fails, and every now and

then glances upward to the grave face of the officer with a look of

unmistakable affection in his soft black eyes.

The third occupant of the little drawing-room is a pale, thin,

studious-looking man, who is seated at a cabinet in a corner away from

the window, amongst papers and books, which are heaped in a chaotic

pile on the floor about him. Strange books and papers these are.

Mathematical charts, inscribed with figures such as perhaps neither

Newton or Leplace ever dreamed of. Volumes in old worm-eaten bindings,

and written in strange languages long since dead and forgotten upon

this earth; but they all seem familiar to this pale student, whose blue

spectacles bend over pages of crabbed Arabic as intently as the eyes

of a boarding-school miss who devours the last volume of the last new

novel. Now and then he scratches a few figures, or a sign in algebra,

or a sentence in Arabic, on the paper before him, and then goes back

to the book again, never looking up towards the smoker or his Hindoo

attendant. Presently the soldier, as he relinquishes his pipe to the

Indian to be replenished breaks the silence.

“So the great people of London, as well as of Paris, are beginning to

believe in you, Laurent?” he says.

The student lifts his head from his work, and turning the blue

spectacles towards the smoker, says in his old unimpassioned manner--

“How can they do otherwise, when I tell them the truth? These,” he

points to the pile of books and papers at his side, “do not err:

they only want to be interpreted rightly. I may have been sometimes

mistaken--I have never been deceived.”

“You draw nice distinctions, Blurosset.”

“Not at all. If I have made mistakes in the course of my career, it has

been from my own ignorance, my own powerlessness to read these aright;

not from any shortcoming in the things themselves. I tell you, they do

not deceive.”

“But will you ever read them aright? Will you ever fathom to the very

bottom this dark gulf of forgotten science?”

“Yes, I am on the right road. I only pray to live long enough to reach

the end.”

“And then----?”

“Then it will be within the compass of my own will to live forever.”

“Pshaw! The old story--the old delusion. How strange that the wisest on

this earth should have been fooled by it!”

“Make sure that it is a delusion, before you say they were fooled by

it, Captain.”

“Well, my dear Blurosset, Heaven forbid that I should dispute with one

so learned as you upon so obscure a subject. I am more at home holding

a fort against the Indians than holding an argument against Albertus

Magnus. You still, however, persist that this faithful Mujeebez here is

in some manner or other linked with my destiny?”

“I do”

“And yet it is very singular! What can connect two men whose

experiences in every way are so dissimilar?”

“I tell you again that he will be instrumental in confounding your

enemies.”

“You know who they are--or rather, who he is. I have but one.”

“Not two, Captain?”

“Not two. No, Blurosset. There is but one on whom I would wreak a deep

and deadly vengeance.”

“And for the other?”

“Pity and forgiveness. Do not speak of that. There are some things

which even now I am not strong enough to hear spoken of. That is one of

them.”

“The history of your faithful Mujeebez there is a singular one, is it

not?” asks the student, rising from his books, and advancing to the

window.

“A very singular one. His master, an Englishman, with whom he came from

Calcutta, and to whom he was devotedly attached----”

“I was indeed, sahib,” said the Indian, in very good English, but with

a strong foreign accent.

“This master, a rich nabob, was murdered, in the house of his sister,

by his own nephew.”

“Very horrible, and very unnatural! Was the nephew hung?”

“No. The jury brought in a verdict of insanity: he was sent to a

madhouse, where no doubt he still remains confined. Mujeebez was not

present at the trial; he had escaped by a miracle with his own life;

for the murderer, coming into the little room in which he slept, and

finding him stirring, gave him a blow on the head, which placed him for

some time in a very precarious state.”

“And did you see the murderer’s face, Mujeebez?” asks Monsieur

Blurosset.

“No, sahib. It was dark, I could see nothing. The blow stunned me: when

I recovered my senses, I was in the hospital, where I lay for months.

The shock had brought on what the doctors called a nervous fever. For

a long time I was utterly incapable of work; when I left the hospital

I had not a friend in the world; but the good lady, the sister of my

poor murdered master, gave me money to return to India, where I was

kitmutghar for some time to an English colonel, in whose household

I learned the language, and whom I did not leave till I entered the

service of the good Captain.”

The “good Captain” laid his hand affectionately on his follower’s

white-turbaned head, something with the protecting gesture with which

he might caress a favourite and faithful dog.

“After you had saved my life, Mujeebez,” he said.

“I would have died to save it, sahib,” answered the Hindoo. “A kind

word sinks deep in the heart of the Indian.”

“And there was no doubt of the guilt of this nephew?” asks Blurosset.

“I cannot say, sahib. I did not know the English language then; I could

understand nothing told me, except my poor master’s nephew was not

hung, but put in a madhouse.”

“Did you see him--this nephew?”

“Yes, sahib, the night before the murder. He came into the room with my

master when he retired to rest. I saw him only for a minute, for I left

the room as they entered.”

“Should you know him again?” inquired the student.

“Anywhere, sahib. He was a handsome young man, with dark hazel eyes and

a bright smile. He did not look like a murderer.”

“That is scarcely a sure rule to go by, is it, Laurent?” asks the

Captain, with a bitter smile.

“I don’t know. A black heart will make strange lines in the handsomest

face, which are translatable to the close observer.”

“Now,” says the officer, rising, and surrendering his pipe to the hands

of his watchful attendant--“now for my morning’s ride, and you will

have the place to yourself for your scientific visitors, Laurent.”

“You will not go where you are likely to meet----”

“Anyone I know? No, Blurosset. The lonelier the road the better I like

it. I miss the deep jungle and the tiger-hunt, eh, Mujeebez?--we miss

them, do we not?”

The Hindoo’s eyes brightened, as he answered eagerly, “Yes, indeed,

sahib.”

Captain Lansdown (that is the name of the officer) is of French

extraction; he speaks English perfectly, but still with a slightly

foreign accent. He has distinguished himself by his marvellous courage

and military genius in the Punjab, and is over in England on leave

of absence. It is singular that so great a friendship should exist

between this impetuous, danger-loving soldier, and the studious French

chemist and pseudo-magician, Laurent Blurosset; but that a very firm

friendship does exist between them is evident. They live in the same

house; are both waited upon by Egerton Lansdown’s Indian servant, and

are constantly together.

Laurent Blurosset, after becoming the fashion in Paris, is now the rage

in London. But he rarely stirs beyond the threshold of his own door,

though his presence is eagerly sought for in scientific coteries, where

opinion is still, however, divided as to whether he is a charlatan

or a great man. The materialists sneer--the spiritualists believe.

His disinterestedness, at any rate, speaks in favour of his truth. He

will receive no money from any of his numerous visitors. He will serve

them, he says, if he can, but he will not sell the wisdom of the mighty

dead; for that is something too grand and solemn to be made a thing of

barter. His discoveries in chemistry have made him sufficiently rich;

and he can afford to devote himself to science, in the hope of finding

truth for his reward. He asks no better recompense than the glory of

the light he seeks. We leave him, then, to his eager and inquisitive

visitors, while the Captain rides slowly through Oxford Street, on his

way to the Edgware Road, through which he emerges into the country.

CHAPTER V.

THE NEW MILKMAN IN PARK LANE.

THE post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles

is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some

consequence in the servants’ hall. The French _chef_, who has

his private sitting-room, wherein he works elaborate and scientific

culinary combinations, which, when he condescends to talk English, he

designates “plates,” has of course very little communication with the

household. Mrs. Moper is his prime minister; he gives his orders to her

for execution, and throws himself back in his easy-chair to _think

out_ a dish, while his handmaiden collects for him the vulgar

elements of his noble art. Mrs. Moper is a very good cook herself; and

when she leaves the Count de Marolles she will go into a family where

there is no foreigner kept, and will have forty pounds per annum and

a still-room of her own. She is in the caterpillar stage now, Mrs.

Sarah Moper, and is content to write herself down kitchenmaid _ad

interim_.

The servants’-hall dinner and the housekeeper’s repast are both over;

but the preparations for _the_ dinner have not yet begun, and Mrs.

Moper and Liza, the scullerymaid, snatch half an hour’s calm before the

coming storm, and sit down to darn stockings,--

“Which,” Mrs. Moper says, “my toes is through and my heels is out, and

never can I get the time to set a stitch. For time there isn’t any in

this house for a under-servant, which under-servant I will be no more

than one year longer; or say my name’s not Sarah Moper.”

Liza, who is mending a black stocking with white thread (and a very

fanciful effect it has too), evidently has no wish to dispute such a

proposition.

“Indeed, Mrs. Moper,” she said, “that’s the truest word as ever you’ve

spoke. It’s well for them as takes their wages for wearin’ silk

gowns, and oilin’ of their hair, and lookin’ out of winder to watch

the carriages go in at Grosvenor Gate; which, don’t tell me as Life

Guardsmen would look up imperdent, if they hadn’t been looked down to

likewise.” Eliza gets rather obscure here. “This ’ouse, Mrs. M., for

upper-servants may be ’eaven, but for unders it’s more like the place

as is pronounced like a letter of the alphabet, and isn’t to be named

by me.”

There is no knowing how far this rather revolutionary style of

conversation might have gone, for at this moment there came that

familiar sound of the clink of milk-pails on the pavement above, and

the London cry of milk.

“It’s Bugden with the milk, Liza; there was a pint of cream wrong

in the last bill, Mrs. Moper says. Ask him to come down and

correctify it, will you, Liza?”

Liza ascends the area steps and parleys with the milkman; presently he

comes jingling down, with his pails swinging against the railings; he

is rather awkward with his pails, this milkman, and I’m afraid he must

spill more milk than he sells, as the Park Lane pavements testify.

“It isn’t Bugden,” says Liza, explanatory, as she ushers him into the

kitchen. “Bugden ’as ’urt his leg, a-milkin’ a cow wot kicks when the

flies worrits, and ’as sent this young man, as is rather new to the

business, but is anxious to do his best.”

The new milkman enters the kitchen as she concludes her speech, and

releasing himself from the pails, expresses his readiness to settle any

mistake in the weekly bill.

He is rather a good-looking fellow, this milkman, and he has a very

curly head of flaxen hair, preposterously light eyebrows, and dark

hazel eyes, which form rather a piquant contrast. I don’t suppose Mrs.

Moper and Liza think him bad-looking, for they beg him to sit down,

and the scullerymaid thrusts the black stocking, on which she was

heretofore engaged, into a table-drawer, and gives her hair a rapid

extemporary smoothing with the palms of her hands. Mr. Bugden’s man

seems by no means disinclined for a little friendly chat: he tells them

how new he is to the business; how he thinks he should scarcely have

chosen cowkeeping for his way of life, if he’d known as much about it

as he does now; how there’s many things in the milk business, such as

horses’ brains, warm water and treacle, and such-like, as goes against

his conscience; how he’s quite new to London and London ways, having

come up only lately from the country.

“Whereabouts in the country?” Mrs. Moper asks.

“Berkshire,” the young man replies.

“Lor’,” Mrs. Moper says, “never was any thing so remarkable. Poor Moper

come from Berkshire, and knowed every inch of the country, and so I

think do I, pretty well. What part of Berkshire, Mr.--Mr.----?”

“Volpes,” suggested the young man.

“What part of Berkshire, Mr. Volpes?”

Mr. Volpes looks, strange to say, rather at a loss to answer this very

natural and simple inquiry. He looks at Mrs. Moper, then at Liza, and

lastly at the pails. The pails seem to assist his memory, for he says,

very distinctly, “Burley Scuffers.”

It is Mrs. Moper’s turn to look puzzled now, and she exclaims

“Burley----”

“Scuffers,” replies the young man. “Burley Scuffers, market town,

fourteen miles on this side of Reading. The ‘Chicories,’ Sir Yorrick

Tristram’s place, is a mile and a half out of the town.”

There’s no disputing such an accurate and detailed description as this.

Mrs. Moper says it’s odd, all the times she’s been to Reading--“which I

wish I had as many sovereigns,” she mutters in parenthesis--never did

she remember passing through “Burley Scuffers.”

“It’s a pretty little town, too,” says the milkman; “there’s a

lime-tree avenue just out of the High Street, called Pork-butchers’

Walk, as is crowded with young people of a Sunday evening after church.”

Mrs. Moper is quite taken with this description; and says, the very

next time she goes to Reading to see poor Moper’s old mother, she will

make a point of going to Burley Scuffers during her stay.

Mr. Volpes says, he would if he were she, and that she couldn’t employ

her leisure time better.

They talk a good deal about Berkshire; and then Mrs. Moper relates

some very interesting facts relative to the late Mr. Moper, and her

determination, “which upon his dying bed it was his comfort so to

think,” never to marry again; at which the milkman looks grieved, and

says the gentlemen will be very blind indeed to their own interests

if they don’t make her change her mind some day; and somehow or

other (I don’t suppose servants often do such things), they get to

talking about their master and their mistress. The milkman seems quite

interested in this subject, and, forgetting in how many houses the

innocent liquid he dispenses may be required, he sits with his elbows

on the kitchen-table, listening to Mrs. Moper’s remarks, and now and

then, when she wanders from her subject, drawing her back to it with

an adroit question. She didn’t know much about the Count, she said,

for the servants was most all of ’em new; they only brought two people

with them from South America, which was Monsieur St. Mirotaine, the

_chef_, and the Countess’s French maid, Mademoiselle Finette. But

she thought Monsieur de Marolles very ’aughty, and as proud as he was

’igh, and that madame was very unhappy, “though it’s hard to know with

them furriners, Mr. Volpes, what is what,” she continues; “and madame’s

gloomy ways may be French for happiness, for all I knows.”

“He’s an Englishman, the Count, isn’t he?” asks Mr. Volpes.

“A Englishman! Lor’ bless your heart, no. They’re both French; she’s

of Spanish igstraction, I believe, and they lived since their marriage

mostly in Spanish America. But they always speaks to each other in

French, when they do speak; which them as waits upon them says isn’t

often.”

“He’s very rich, I suppose,” says the milkman.

“Rich!” cries Mrs. Moper, “the money as that man has got they say is

fabellous; and he’s a regular business man too, down at his bank every

day, rides off to the City as punctual as the clock strikes ten. Lor’,

by the bye, Mr. Volpes,” says Mrs. Moper suddenly, “you don’t happen to

know of a tempory tiger, do you?”

“A temporary tiger!” Mr. Volpes looks considerably puzzled.

“Why, you see, the Count’s tiger, as wasn’t higher than the kitchen

table I do believe, broke his arm the other day. He was a-hangin’ on

to the strap behind the cab, a-standin’ upon nothing, as them boys

will, when the vehicle was knocked agen an omnibus, and his arm bein’

wrenched sudden out of the strap, snapped like a bit of sealing-wax;

and they’ve took him to the hospital, and he’s to come back as soon as

ever he’s well; for he’s a deal thought on, bein’ a’most the smallest

tiger at the West-end. So, if you happen to know of a boy as would come

temporary, we should be obliged by your sending him round.”

“Did he know of a boy as would come temporary?” Mr. Budgen’s young

man appeared so much impressed by this question, that for a minute or

two he was quite incapable of answering it. He leaned his elbows on

the kitchen table, with his face buried in his hands and his fingers

twisted in his flaxen hair, and when he looked up there was, strange

to say, a warm flush over his pale complexion, and something like a

triumphant sparkle in his dark brown eyes.

“Nothing could fall out better,” he said; “nothing, nothing!”

“What, the poor lad breaking his arm?” asked Mrs. Moper, in a tone of

surprise.

“No, no, not that,” said Mr. Budgen’s young man, just a little

confused; “what I mean is, that I know the very boy to suit you--the

very boy, the very boy of all others to undertake the business. Ah,”

he continued in a lower voice, “and to go through with it, too, to the

end.”

“Why, as to the business,” replied Mrs. Moper, “it ain’t overmuch,

hangin’ on behind, and lookin’ knowin’, and givin’ other tigers as

good as they bring, when waitin’ outside the _Calting_ or the

_Anthinium_; which tigers as is used to the highest names in the

peerage familiar as their meat and drink, will go on contemptuous about

our fambly, callin’ the bank ‘the shop,’ and a-askin’, till they got

our lad’s blood up (which he had had his guinea lessons from the May

Fair Mawler, and were better left alone), when the smash was a-comin’,

or whether we meant to give out three-and-sixpence in the pound like

a honest house, or do the shabby thing and clear ourselves by a

compensation with our creditors of fourpence-farthing? Ah,” continued

Mrs. Moper, gravely, “many’s the time that child have come home with

his nose as big as the ’ead of a six-week old baby, and no eyes at all

as any one could discover, which he’d been that knocked about in a

stand-up fight with a lad three times his weight and size.”

“Then I can send the boy, and you’ll get him the situation?” said Mr.

Budgen’s young man, who did not seem particularly interested in the

rather elaborate recital of the exploits of the invalid tiger.

“He can have a character, I suppose?” inquired the lady.

“Oh, ah, to be sure. Budgen will give him a character.”

“You will impress upon the youth,” said Mrs. Moper, with great dignity,

“that he will not be able to make this his permanence ’ome. The pay is

good, and the meals is reg’lar, but the situation is tempory.”

“All right,” said Mr. Budgen’s assistant; “he doesn’t want a situation

for long. I’ll bring him round myself this evening--good afternoon;”

with which very brief farewell, the flaxen-haired, dark-eyed milkman

strode out of the kitchen.

“Hum!” muttered the cook, “his manners has not the London polish: I

meant to have ast him to tea.”

“Why, I’m blest,” exclaimed the scullerymaid suddenly, “if he haven’t

been and gone and left his yoke and pails behind him! Well, of all the

strange milkmen I ever come a-nigh, if he ain’t the strangest!”

She might have thought him stranger still, perhaps, this light-haired

milkman, had she seen him hail a stray cab in Brook Street, spring

into it, snatch off his flaxen locks, whose hyacinthine waves were in

the convenient form known by that most disagreeable of words, a wig;

snatch off also the holland blouse common to the purveyors of milk,

and rolling the two into a bundle, stuff them into the pocket of his

shooting-jacket, before throwing himself back into the corner of the

vehicle, to enjoy a meditative cigar, as his charioteer drives his

best pace in the direction of that transpontine temple of Esculapius,

Mr. Darley’s surgery. Daredevil Dick has made the first move in that

fearful game of chess which is to be played between him and the Count

de Marolles.

CHAPTER VI.

SIGNOR MOSQUETTI RELATES AN ADVENTURE.

ON the evening which follows the very afternoon during which Richard

Marwood made his first and only essay in the milk-trade, the Count and

Countess de Marolles attend a musical party--I beg pardon, I should,

gentle reader, as you know, have said a _soirée musicale_--at the

house of a lady of high rank in Belgrave Square. London was almost

empty, and this was one of the last parties of the season; but it is a

goodly and an impressive sight to see--even when London is, according

to every fashionable authority, a perfect Sahara--how many splendid

carriages will draw up to the awning my Lady erects over the pavement

before her door, when she announces herself “at home;” how many

gorgeously dressed and lovely women will descend therefrom, scenting

the night air of Belgravia with the fragrance wafted from their waving

tresses and point-d’Alençon-bordered handkerchiefs; lending a perfume

to the autumn violets struggling out a fading existence in Dresden

boxes on the drawing-room balconies; lending the light of their

diamonds to the gas-lamps before the door, and the light of their

eyes to help out the aforesaid diamonds; sweeping the autumn dust and

evening dews with the borders of costly silks, and marvels of Lyons and

Spitalfields, and altogether glorifying the ground over which they walk.

On this evening one range of windows, at least, in Belgrave Square is

brilliantly illuminated. Lady Londersdon’s Musical Wednesday, the last

of the season, has been inaugurated with _éclat_ by a scena from

Signora Scorici, of Her Majesty’s Theatre and the Nobility’s Concerts;

and Mr. Argyle Fitz-Bertram, the great English basso-baritono, and the

handsomest man in England, has just shaken the square with the buffo

duet from the Cenerentola--in which performance he, Argyle, has so

entirely swamped that amiable tenor Signor Maretti, that the latter

gentleman has serious thoughts of calling him out to-morrow morning;

which idea he would carry into execution if Argyle Fitz-Bertram were

not a crack shot, and a pet pupil of Mr. Angelo’s into the bargain.

But even the great Argyle finds himself--with the exception of being up

to his eyes in a slough of despond, in the way of platonic flirtation

with a fat duchess of fifty--comparatively nowhere. The star of the

evening is the new tenor, Signor Mosquetti, who has condescended to

attend Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday. Argyle, who is the best-natured

fellow as well as the most generous, and whose great rich voice wells

up from a heart as sound as his lungs, throws himself back into a

low easy-chair--it creaks a little under his weight, by the bye--and

allows the duchess to flirt with him, while a buzz goes round the room;

Mosquetti is going to sing. Argyle looks lazily out of his half-closed

dark eyes, with that peculiar expression which seems to say--“Sing

your best, old fellow! My _g_ in the bass clef would crush your

half-octave or so of falsetto before you knew where you were, or your

‘Pretty Jane’ either. Sing away, my boy! we’ll have ‘Scots wha hae’

by-and-by. I’ve some friends down in Essex who want to hear it, and the

wind’s in the right quarter for the voice to travel. They won’t hear

_you_ five doors off. Sing your best.”

Just as Signor Mosquetti is about to take his place at the piano, the

Count and Countess de Marolles advance through the crowd about the

doorway.

Valerie, beautiful, pale, calm as ever, is received with considerable

_empressement_ by her hostess. She is the heiress of one of the

most ancient and aristocratic families in France, and is moreover the

wife of one of the richest men in London, so is sure of a welcome

throughout Belgravia.

“Mosquetti is going to sing,” murmurs Lady Londersdon; “you were

charmed with him in the Lucia, of course? You have lost Fitz-Bertram’s

duet. It was charming; all the chandeliers were shaken by his lower

notes; charming, I assure you. He’ll sing again after Mosquetti:

the Duchess of C. is _éprise_, as you see. I believe she is

perpetually sending him diamond rings and studs; and the Duke, they do

say, has refused to be responsible for her account at Storr’s.”

Valerie’s interest in Mr. Fitz-Bertram’s conduct is not very intense;

she bends her haughty head, just slightly elevating her arched eyebrows

with the faintest indication of well-bred surprise; but she _is_

interested in Signor Mosquetti, and avails herself of the seat her

hostess offers to her near Erard’s grand piano. The song concludes very

soon after she is seated; but Mosquetti remains near the piano, talking

to an elderly gentleman, who is evidently a connoisseur.

“I have never heard but one man, Signor Mosquetti,” says this

gentleman, “whose voice resembled yours.”

There is nothing very particular in the words, but Valerie’s attention

is apparently arrested by them, for she fixes her eyes intently on

Signor Mosquetti, as though awaiting his reply.

“And he, my lord?” says Mosquetti, interrogatively.

“He, poor fellow, is dead.” Now indeed Valerie, pale with a pallor

greater than usual, listens as though her whole soul hung on the words

she heard.

“He is dead,” continued the gentleman. “He died young, in the zenith of

his reputation. His name was--let me see--I heard him in Paris last;

his name was----”

“De Lancy, perhaps, my lord?” says Mosquetti.

“It was De Lancy; yes. He had some most peculiar and at the same time

most beautiful tones in his voice, and you appear to me to have the

very same.”

Mosquetti bowed at the compliment. “It is singular, my lord,” he said;

“but I doubt if those tones are quite natural to me. I am a little of

a mimic, and at one period of my life I was in the habit of imitating

poor De Lancy, whose singing I very much admired.”

Valerie grasps the delicate fan in her nervous hand so tightly that the

group of courtiers and fair ladies, of the time of Louis Quatorze,

dancing nothing particular on a blue cloud, are crushed out of all

symmetry as she listens to this conversation.

“I was, at the time I knew De Lancy, merely a chorus-singer at the

Italian Opera, Paris.”

The listeners draw nearer, and form quite a circle round Mosquetti, who

is the lion of the night; even Argyle Fitz-Bertram pricks up his ears,

and deserts the Duchess in order to hear this conversation.

“A low chorus-singer,” he mutters to himself. “So help me, Jupiter, I

knew he was a nobody.”

“This passion for mimicry,” said Mosquetti, “was so great that I

acquired a sort of celebrity throughout the Opera House, and even

beyond its walls. I could imitate De Lancy better, perhaps, than any

one else; for in height, figure, and general appearance I was said to

resemble him.”

“You do,” said the gentleman; “you do very much resemble the poor

fellow.”

“This resemblance one day gave rise to quite an adventure, which, if I

shall not bore you----” he glanced round.

There is a general murmur. “Bore us! No! Delighted, enraptured, charmed

above all things!” Fitz-Bertram is quite energetic in this _omnes_

business, and says, “No, no!”--muttering to himself afterwards, “So

help me, Jupiter, I knew the fellow was a nuisance!”

“But the adventure! Pray let us hear it!” cried eager voices.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I was a careless reckless fellow; quite

content to put on a pair of russet boots which half swallowed me, and

a green cotton-velvet tunic short in the sleeves and tight across

the chest, and to go on the stage and sing in a chorus with fifty

others, as idle as myself, in other russet boots and cotton-velvet

tunics, which, as you know, is the court costume of a chorus-singer

from the time of Charlemagne to the reign of Louis XV. I was quite

happy, I say, to lounge on to the stage, unknown, unnoticed, badly

paid and worse dressed, provided when the chorus was finished I had

my cigarette, dominoes, and my glass of cognac in a third-rate café.

I was playing one morning at those eternal dominoes--(and never, I

think,” said Mosquetti, parenthetically, “had a poor fellow so many

double-sixes in his hand)--when I was told a gentleman wanted to see

me. This seemed too good a joke--a gentleman for me! It couldn’t be

a limb of the law, as I didn’t owe a farthing--no Parisian tradesman

being quite so demented as to give me credit. It was a gentleman--a

very aristocratic-looking fellow; handsome--but I didn’t like his face;

affable--and yet I didn’t like his manner.”

Ah, Valerie! you may well listen now!

“He wanted me, he said,” continued Mosquetti, “to decide a little

wager. Some foolish girl, who had seen De Lancy on the stage, and who

believed him the ideal hero of romance, and was only in too much danger

of throwing her heart and fortune at his feet, was to be disenchanted

by any stratagem that could be devised. Her parents had intrusted the

management of the affair to him, a relation of the lady’s. Would I

assist him? Would I represent De Lancy, and play a little scene in

the Bois de Boulogne, to open the eyes of this silly boarding-school

miss--would I, for a consideration? It was only to act a little stage

play off the stage, and was for a good cause. I consented; and that

evening, at half-past ten o’clock, under the shadow of the winter night

and the leafless trees, I----”

“Stop, stop! Signor Mosquetti!” cry the bystanders. “Madame! Madame de

Marolles! Water! Smelling-salts! Your _flacon_, Lady Emily: she

has fainted!”

No; she has not fainted; this is something worse than fainting, this

convulsive agony, in which the proud form writhes, while the white and

livid lips murmur strange and dreadful words.

“Murdered, murdered and innocent! while I, vile dupe, pitiful fool, was

only a puppet in the hands of a demon!”

At this very moment Monsieur de Marolles, who has been summoned from

the adjoining apartment, where he has been discussing a financial

measure with some members of the lower House, enters hurriedly.

“Valerie, Valerie, what is the matter?” he says, approaching his wife.

She rises--rises with a terrible effort, and looks him full in the face.

“I thought, monsieur, that I knew the hideous abyss of your black soul

to its lowest depths. I was wrong; I never knew you till to-night.”

Imagine such strong language as this in a Belgravian drawing-room, and

then you can imagine the astonishment of the bystanders.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Signor Mosquetti hurriedly.

“What?” cried they eagerly.

“That is the very man I have been speaking of.”

“That? The Count de Marolles?”

“The man bending over the lady who has fainted.”

Petrified Belgravians experience a new sensation--surprise--and rather

like it.

Argyle Fitz-Bertram twists his black moustachios reflectively, and

mutters--

“So help me, Jupiter. I knew there’d be a row! I shan’t have to sing

‘Scots wha hae,’ and shall be just in time for that little supper at

the Café de l’Europe.”

CHAPTER VII.

THE GOLDEN SECRET IS TOLD, AND THE GOLDEN BOWL IS BROKEN.

THE new tiger, or, as he is called in the kitchen, the “tempory tiger,”

takes his place, on the morning after Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday,

behind the Count de Marolles’ cab, as that gentleman drives into the

City.

There is little augury to be drawn from the pale smooth face of Raymond

de Marolles, though Signor Mosquetti’s revelation has made his position

rather a critical one. Till now he has ruled Valerie with a high hand;

and though never conquering the indomitable spirit of the proud Spanish

woman, he has at least forced that spirit to do the will of his. But

_now_, now that she knows the trick put upon her--now that she

knows that the man she so deeply adored did not betray her, but died

the victim of another’s treachery--that the blood in which she has

steeped her soul was the blood of the innocent,--what if now, in her

desperation and despair, she dares all, and reveals all; what then?

“Why, then,” says Raymond de Marolles, cutting his horse over the ears

with a delicate touch of the whip, which stings home, though, for all

its delicacy; “why then, never shall it be said that Raymond Marolles

found himself in a dilemma, without finding within himself the power to

extricate himself. We are not conquered yet, and we have seen a good

deal of life in thirty years--and not a little danger. Play your best

card, Valerie; I’ve a trump in my own hand to play when the time comes.

Till then, keep dark. I tell you, my good woman, I have hothouses of my

own, and don’t want your Covent Garden exotics at twopence a bunch!”

This last sentence is addressed to a woman, who pleads earnestly for

the purchase of a wretched bunch of violets, which she holds up to

tempt the man of fashion as she runs by the wheels of his cab, driving

very slowly through the Strand.

“Fresh violets, sir. Do, sir, please. Only twopence, just twopence,

sir, for the love of charity. I’ve a poor old woman at home, not

related to me, sir, but I keep her. She’s dying-starving, sir, and

dying of old age.”

“Bah! I tell you, my good woman, I’m not Lawrence Sterne on a

sentimental journey, but a practical man of business. I don’t give

macaroons to donkeys, or save mythic old women from starvation. You’d

better keep out of the way of the wheels--they’ll be over your feet

presently, and if you suffer from corns they may probably hurt you,”

says the philanthropic banker, in his politest tones.

“Stop, stop!” suddenly exclaims the woman, with an energy that almost

startles even Raymond. “It’s you, is it--Jim? No, not Jim; he’s dead

and gone, I know; but you, you, the fine gentleman, the other brother.

Stop, stop, I tell you, if you want to know a secret that’s in the

keeping of one who may die while I am talking here! Stop, if you want

to know who you are and what you are! Stop!”

Raymond does pull up at this last sentence.

“My good woman, do not be so energetic. Every eye in the Strand is on

us; we shall have a crowd presently. Stay, wait for me in Essex Street;

I’ll get out at the corner; that’s a quiet street, and we shall not be

observed. Anything you have to tell me you can tell me there.”

The woman obeys him, and draws back to the pavement, where she keeps

pace with the cab.

“A pretty time this for discoveries!” mutters the Count. “Who I am, and

what I am! It’s the secret, I suppose, that the twaddling old maniac

in Blind Peter made such a row about. Who I am, and what I am! Oh, I

dare say I shall turn out to be somebody great, as the hero does in

a lady’s novel. It’s a pity I haven’t the mark of a coronet behind

my ear, or a bloody hand on my wrist. Who I am, and what I am! The

son of a journeyman tailor perhaps, or a chemist’s apprentice, whose

aristocratic connections prevented his acknowledging my mother.”

He is at the corner of Essex Street by this time, and springs out of

the cab, throwing the reins to the temporary tiger, whose sharp face we

need scarcely inform the reader discloses the features of the boy Slosh.

The woman is waiting for him; and after a few moments’ earnest

conversation, Raymond emerges from the street, and orders the boy to

drive the cab home immediately: he is not going to the City, but is

going on particular business elsewhere.

Whether the “temporary tiger” proves himself worthy of the responsible

situation he holds, and does drive the cab home, I cannot say; but I

only know that a very small boy, in a ragged coat a great deal too

large for him, and a battered hat so slouched over his eyes as quite

to conceal his face from the casual observer, creeps cautiously, now a

few paces behind, now a hundred yards on the other side of the way, now

disappearing in the shadow of a doorway, now reappearing at the corner

of the street, but never losing sight of the Count de Marolles and the

purveyor of violets, as they bend their steps in the direction of Seven

Dials.

Heaven forbid that we should follow them through all the turnings and

twistings of that odoriferous neighbourhood, where foul scents, foul

sights, and fouler language abound; whence May Fair and Belgravia

shrink shuddering, as from an ill it is well for them to let alone,

and a wrong that he may mend who will: not they who have been born

for better things than to set disjointed times aright, or play the

revolutionist to the dethronement of the legitimate monarchy of Queen

Starvation and King Fever, to say nothing of the princes of the

blood--Dirt, Drunkenness, Theft, and Murder. When John Jones, tired of

the monotonous pastime of beating his wife’s skull with a poker, comes

to Lambeth and murders an Archbishop of Canterbury for the sake of

the spoons, it will be time, in the eyes of Belgravia, to reform John

Jones. In the meanwhile we of the upper ten thousand have Tattersall’s

and Her Majesty’s Theatre, and John Jones (who, low republican, says he

must have his amusements too) has such little diversions as wife-murder

and cholera to break the monotony of his existence.

The Count and the violet-seller at last come to a pause. They had

walked very quickly through the pestiferous streets, Raymond holding

his aristocratic breath and shutting his patrician ears to the scents

and the sounds around him. They come to a stand at last, in a dark

court, before a tall lopsided house, with irresolute chimneypots,

which looked as if the only thing that kept them erect was the want of

unanimity as to which way they should fall.

Raymond, when invited by the woman to enter, looks suspiciously at the

dingy staircase, as if wondering whether it would last his time, but at

the request of his companion ascends it.

The boy in the large coat and slouched hat is playing marbles with

another boy on the second-floor landing, and has evidently lived there

all his life, and yet I’m puzzled as to who drove that cab home to the

stables at the back of Park Lane. I fear it was not the “temporary

tiger.”

The Count de Marolles and his guide pass the youthful gamester, who

has just lost his second half-penny, and ascend to the very top of the

rickety house, the garrets of which are afflicted with intermittent

ague whenever there is a high wind.

Into one of these garrets the woman conducts Raymond, and on a bed--or

its apology, a thing of shreds and patches, straw and dirt, which goes

by the name of a bed at this end of the town--lies the old woman we

last saw in Blind Peter.