Eight years, more or less, have not certainly had the effect of

enhancing the charms of this lady; and there is something in her face

to-day more terrible even than wicked old age or feminine drunkenness.

It is death that lends those livid hues to her complexion, which all

the cosmetics from Atkinson’s or the Burlington Arcade, were she

minded to use them, would never serve to conceal. Raymond has not

come too soon if he is to hear any secret from those ghastly lips. It

is some time before the woman, whom she still calls Sillikens, can

make the dying hag understand who this fine gentleman is, and what

it is he wants with her, and even when she does succeed in making

her comprehend all this, the old woman’s speech is very obscure, and

calculated to try the patience of a more amiable man than the Count de

Marolles.

“Yes, it was a golden secret--a golden secret, eh, my dear? It was

something to have a marquis for a son-in-law, wasn’t it, my dear, eh?”

mumbled the dying old hag.

“A marquis for a son-in-law! What does the jibbering old idiot mean?”

muttered Raymond, whose reverence for his grandmother was not one of

the strongest points in his composition. “A marquis! I dare say my

respected progenitor kept a public-house, or something of that sort. A

marquis! The ‘Marquis of Granby,’ most likely!”

“Yes, a marquis,” continued the old woman, “eh, dear! And he married

your mother--married her at the parish church, one cold dark November

morning; and I’ve got the c’tificate. Yes,” she mumbled, in answer

to Raymond’s eager gesture, “I’ve got it; but I’m not going to tell

you where;--no, not till I’m paid. I must be paid for that secret in

gold--yes, in gold. They say that we don’t rest any easier in our

coffins for the money that’s buried with us; but I should like to lie

up to neck in golden sovereigns new from the Mint, and not one light

one amongst ’em.”

“Well,” said Raymond, impatiently, “your secret! I’m rich, and can pay

for it. Your secret--quick!”

“Well, he hadn’t been married to her long before a change came, in his

native country, over the sea yonder,” said the old woman, pointing

in the direction of St. Martin’s Lane, as if she thought the British

Channel flowed somewhere behind that thoroughfare. “A change came, and

he got his rights again. One king was put down and another king was

set up, and everybody else was massacred in the streets; it was--a--I

don’t know what they call it; but they’re always a-doin’ it. So he got

his rights, and he was a rich man again, and a great man; and then his

first thought was to keep his marriage with my girl a secret. All very

well, you know, my girl for a wife while he was giving lessons at a

shilling a piece, in _Parlez-vous Français_, and all that; but now

he was a marquis, and it was quite another thing.”

Raymond by this time gets quite interested; so does the boy in the

big coat and the slouched hat, who has transferred the field of his

gambling operations in the marble line to the landing outside the

garret door.

“He wanted the secret kept, and I kept it for gold. I kept it even from

her, your mother, my own ill-used girl, for gold. She never knew who he

was; she thought he’d deserted her, and she took to drinking; she and

I threw you into the river when we were mad drunk, and couldn’t stand

your squalling. She died--don’t you ask me how. I told you before not

to ask me how my girl died--I’m mad enough without that question; she

died, and I kept the secret. For a long time it was gold to me, and

he used to send me money regular to keep it dark; but by-and-by the

money stopped from coming. I got savage, but still I kept the secret;

because, you see, it was nothing when it was told, and there was no

one rich enough to pay me to tell it. I didn’t know where to find the

marquis; I only knew he was somewhere in France.”

“France?” exclaims Raymond.

“Yes; didn’t I tell you France? He was a French marquis--a refugee they

called him when he first made acquaintance with my girl--a teacher of

French and mathematics.”

“And his name--his name?” asks Raymond, eagerly. “His name, woman, if

you don’t want to drive me mad.”

“He called himself Smith, when he was a-teachin’, my dear,” said the

old woman with a ghastly leer; “what are you going to pay me for the

secret?”

“Whatever you like, only tell me--tell me before you----”

“Die. Yes, deary; there ain’t any time to waste, is there? I don’t want

to make a hard bargain. Will you bury me up to my neck in gold?”

“Yes, yes; speak!” He is almost beside himself, and raises a

threatening hand. The old woman grins.

“I told you before _that_ wasn’t the way, deary. Wait a bit.

Sillikens, give me that ’ere old shoe, will you? Look you here! It’s a

double sole, and the marriage certificate is between the two leathers.

I’ve walked on it this thirty years and more.”

“And the name--the name?”

“The name of the Marquis was De--de----”

“She’s dying! Give me some water!” cried Raymond.

“De Ce--Ce----” the syllables come in fitful gasps. Raymond throws some

water over her face.

“De Cevennes, my deary!--and the golden secret is told.”

And the golden bowl is broken!

Lay the ragged sheet over the ghastly face, Sillikens, and kneel down

and pray for help in your utter loneliness; for the guilty being whose

soul has gone forth to meet its Maker was your only companion and stay,

however frail that stay might be.

Go out into the sunshine, Monsieur de Marolles; that which you leave

behind in the tottering garret, shaken by an ague-paroxysm with the

fitful autumn wind, is nothing so terrible to your eyes.

You have accustomed yourself to the face of Death before now; you have

met that grim potentate on his own ground, and done with him what it is

your policy to do with everything on earth--you have made him useful to

you.

CHAPTER VIII.

ONE STEP FURTHER ON THE RIGHT TRACK.

IT is not a very romantic locality to which we must now conduct the

reader, being neither more nor less than the shop and surgery of

Mr. Augustus Darley; which temple of the healing god is scented,

this autumn afternoon, with the mingled perfumes of Cavendish and

bird’s-eye tobacco, Turkey rhubarb, whiskey-punch, otto of roses, and

muffins; conflicting odours, which form, or rather object to form, an

amalgamation, each particular effluvium asserting its individuality.

In the surgery Gus is seated, playing the intellectual and intensely

exciting game of dominoes with our acquaintance of the Cheerful

Cherokee Society, Mr. Percy Cordonner. A small jug, without either

of those earthenware conventionalities, spout or handle, and with

Mr. Cordonner’s bandanna stuffed into the top to imprison the subtle

essences of the mixture within, stands between the two gentlemen; while

Percy, as a guest, is accommodated with a real tumbler, having only

three triangular bits chipped out of the edge. Gus imbibes the exciting

fluid from a cracked custard-cup, with paper wafered round it to keep

the parts from separating, two of which cups are supposed to be equal

(by just measurement) to Mr. P. C.’s tumbler. Before the small fire

kneels the juvenile domestic of the young surgeon, toasting muffins,

and presenting to the two gentlemen a pleasing study in anatomical

perspective and the mysteries of foreshortening; to which, however,

they are singularly inattentive, devoting their entire energies to

the pieces of spotted ivory in their hands, and the consumption, by

equitable division, of the whiskey-punch.

“I say, Gus,” said Mr. Cordonner, stopping in the middle of a gulp of

his favourite liquid, at the risk of strangulation, with as much alarm

in his face as his placid features were capable of exhibiting--“I say,

this isn’t the professional tumbler, is it?”

“Why, of course it is,” said his friend. “We have only had that one

since midsummer. The patients don’t like it because it’s chipped; but

I always tell them, that after having gone through having a tooth

out--particularly,” he added parenthetically, “as I take ’em out

(plenty of lancet, forceps, and key, for their eighteenpence)--they

needn’t grumble about having to rinse their mouths out of a cracked

tumbler.”

Mr. Cordonner turned pale.

“Do they do that?” he said, and deliberately shot his last sip of the

delicious beverage over the head of the kneeling damsel, with so good

an aim that it in a manner grazed her curl-papers. “It isn’t friendly

of you, Gus,” he said, with mild reproachfulness, “to treat a fellow

like this.”

“It’s all right, old boy,” said Gus, laughing. “Sarah Jane washes it,

you know. You wash the tumbler and things, don’t you, Sarah Jane?”

“Wash ’em?” answered the youthful domestic; “I should think so, sir,

indeed. Why, I wipes ’em round reg’lar with my apron, and breathes on

’em to make ’em bright.”

“Oh, that’ll do!” said Mr. Cordonner, piteously. “Don’t investigate,

Gus; you’ll only make matters worse. Oh, why, why did I ask that

question? Why didn’t I remember ‘it’s folly to be otherwise?’ That

punch was delicious--and now----” He leant his head upon his hand,

buried his face in his pocket-handkerchief, pondered in his heart, and

was still.

In the mean time the shop is not empty. Isabella is standing behind

the counter, very busy with several bottles, a glass measure, and a

pestle and mortar, making up a prescription, a cough mixture, from her

brother’s Latin. Rather a puzzling document, this prescription, to

any one but Bell; for there are calculations about next year’s Derby

scribbled on the margin, and rough sketches of the Smasher, and a more

youthful votary of the Smasher’s art, surnamed “Whooping William,”

pencilled on the back thereof; but to Bell it seems straightforward

enough. At any rate, she dashes away with the bottles, the measure, and

the pestle and mortar, as if she knew perfectly well what she was about.

She is not alone in the shop. A gentleman is leaning on the counter,

watching the busy white hands very intently, and apparently deeply

interested in the progress of the cough-mixture. This gentleman is her

brother’s old friend, “Daredevil Dick.”

Richard Marwood has been a great deal at the surgery since the night

on which he first set foot in his old haunts; he has brought his

mother over, and introduced that lady to Miss Darley. Mrs. Marwood was

delighted with Isabella’s frank manners and handsome face, and insisted

on carrying her back to dine in Spring Gardens. Quite a sociable little

dinner they had too, Richard being--for a man who had been condemned

for a murder, and had escaped from a lunatic asylum--very cheerful

indeed. The young man told Isabella all his adventures, till that

young lady alternately laughed and cried--thereby affording Richard’s

fond mother most convincing proof of the goodness of her heart--and

was altogether so very brilliant and amusing, that when at eleven

o’clock Gus came round from a very critical case (viz., a quarrel of

the Cheerfuls as to whether Gustavus Ponsonby, novelist and satirist,

magazine-writer and poet, deserved the trouncing he had received in

the “Friday Pillery”) to take Bell home in a cab, the little trio

simultaneously declared that the evening had gone as if by magic! As

if by magic! What if to two out of those three the evening did really

go by magic? There is a certain pink-legged little gentleman, with

wings, and a bandage round his eyes, who, some people say, is as great

a magician in his way as Albertus Magnus or Doctor Dee, and who has

done as much mischief and worked as much ruin in his own manner as all

the villanous saltpetre ever dug out of the bosom of the peaceful,

corn-growing, flower-bearing earth. That gentleman, I have no doubt,

presided on the occasion.

Thus the acquaintance of Richard and Isabella had ripened into

something very much like friendship; and here he is, watching her

employed in the rather unromantic business of making up a cough-mixture

for an elderly washerwoman of methodistical persuasions. But it is

one of the fancies of the pink-legged gentleman aforesaid to lend

his bandage to his victims; and there is nothing that John, William,

George, Henry, James, or Alfred can do, in which Jane, Eliza, Susan,

or Sarah will not see a dignity and a charm, or _vice versâ_.

Pshaw! It is not Mokannah who wears the silver veil; it is we who are

in love with Mokannah who put on the glittering, blinding medium;

and, looking at that gentleman through the dazzle and the glitter,

insist on thinking him a very handsome man, till some one takes the

veil off our eyes, and we straightway fall to and abuse poor Mokannah,

because he is not what we chose to fancy him. It is very hard upon poor

tobacco-smoking, beer-imbibing, card-playing, latch-key-loving Tom

Jones, that Sophia will insist on elevating him into a god, and then

being angry with him because he is Tom Jones and fond of bitter ale and

bird’s-eye. But come what may, the pink-legged gentleman must have his

diversion, and no doubt his eyes twinkle merrily behind that bandage of

his, to see the fools this wise world of ours is made up of.

“You could trust me, Isabella, then,” said Richard; “you could trust

me, in spite of all--in spite of my wasted youth and the blight upon my

name?”

“Do we not all trust you, Mr. Marwood, with our entire hearts?”

answered the young lady, taking shelter under cover of a very wide

generality.

“Not ‘Mr. Marwood,’ Bell; it sounds very cold from the lips of my old

friend’s sister. Every one calls me Richard, and I, without once asking

permission, have called you Bell. Call me Richard, Bell, if you trust

me.”

She looks him in the face, and is silent for a moment; her heart beats

a great deal faster--so fast that her lips can scarcely shape the words

she speaks.

“I do trust you, Richard; I believe your heart to be goodness and truth

itself.”

“Is it worth having, then, Bell? I wouldn’t ask you that question if I

had not a hope now--ay, and not such a feeble one either--to see my

name cleared from the stain that rests upon it. If there is any truth

in my heart, Isabella, that truth is yours alone. Can you trust me, as

the woman who loves trusts--through life and till death, under every

shadow and through every cloud?”

I don’t know whether essence of peppermint, tincture of myrrh, and

hair-oil, are the proper ingredients in a cough-mixture; but I know

that Isabella poured them into the glass measure very liberally.

“You do not answer me, Isabella. Ah, you cannot trust the branded

criminal--the escaped lunatic--the man the world calls a murderer!”

“Not trust you, Richard?” Only four words, and only one glance from the

gray eyes into the brown, and so much told! So much more than I could

tell in a dozen chapters, told in those four words and that one look!

Gus opens the half-glass door at this very moment. “Are you coming to

tea?” he asks; “here’s Sarah Jane up to her eyes in grease and muffins.”

“Yes, Gus, dear old friend,” said Richard, laying his hand on Darley’s

shoulder; “we’re coming in to tea immediately, _brother_!”

Gus looked at him with a glance of considerable astonishment, shook him

heartily by the hand, and gave a long whistle; after which he walked up

to the counter and examined the cough-mixture.

“Oh!” he said, “I suppose that’s why you’ve put enough laudanum into

this to poison a small regiment, eh, Bell? Perhaps we may as well throw

it out of the window; for if it goes out of the door I shall be hung

for wholesale murder.”

They were a very merry party over the little tea-table; and if

nobody ate any of the muffins, which Mr. Cordonner called “embodied

indigestions,” they laughed a great deal, and talked still more--so

much so, that Percy declared his reasoning faculties to be quite

overpowered, and wanted to be distinctly informed whether it was

Richard who was going to marry Gus, or Gus about to unite himself to

the juvenile domestic, or he himself who was to be married against

his inclination--which, seeing he was of a yielding and peace-loving

disposition, was not so unlikely--or, in short, to use his own

expressive language, “what the row was all about?”

Nobody, however, took the trouble to set Mr. P. C.’s doubts at rest,

and he drank his tea with perfect contentment, but without sugar, and

in a dense intellectual fog. “It doesn’t matter,” he murmured; “perhaps

Richard will turn again and be Lord Mayor of London town, and then my

children will read his adventures in a future Pinnock, and they may

understand it. It’s a great thing to be a child, and to understand

those sort of things. When I was six years old I knew who William Rufus

married, and how many people died in the Plague of London. I can’t

say it made me any happier or better, but I dare say it was a great

advantage.”

At this moment the bell hung at the shop-door (a noisy preventive of

petty larceny, giving the alarm if any juvenile delinquent had a desire

to abstract a bottle of castor-oil, or a camomile-pill or so, for his

peculiar benefit) rang violently, and our old friend Mr. Peters burst

into the shop, and through the shop into the parlour, in a state of

such excitement that his very fingers seemed out of breath.

“Back again?” cried Richard, starting up with surprise; for be it known

to the reader that Mr. Peters had only the day before started for

Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy to hunt up evidence about this man, whose very

image lay buried outside that town.

Before the fingers of Mr. Peters, which quite shook with excitement,

could shape an answer to Richard’s exclamation of surprise, a very

dignified elderly gentleman, whose appearance was almost clerical,

followed the detective into the room, and bowed politely to the

assembled party.

“I will take upon myself to be my own sponsor,” said that gentleman.

“If, as I believe, I am speaking to Mr. Marwood,” he added, looking at

Richard, who bowed affirmatively, “it is to the interest of both of

us--of you, sir, more especially--that we should become acquainted. I

am Dr. Tappenden, of Slopperton.”

Mr. Cordonner, having politely withdrawn himself from the group so

as not to interfere with any confidential communication, was here

imprudent enough to attempt to select a book from the young surgeon’s

hanging-library, and, in endeavouring to take down the third volume

of _Bragelonne_, brought down, as usual, the entire literary

shower-bath on his devoted head, and sat quietly snowed up, as it were,

in loose leaves of Michel Lévy’s shilling edition, and fragments of

illustrations by Tony Johannot.

Richard looked a little puzzled at Dr. Tappenden’s introduction; but

Mr. Peters threw in upon his fingers this piece of information,--“He

knows _him_!” and Richard was immediately interested.

“We are all friends here, I believe?” said the schoolmaster, glancing

round interrogatively.

“Oh, decidedly, Monsieur d’Artagnan,” replied Percy, absently looking

up from one of the loose leaves he had selected for perusal from those

scattered around him.

“Monsieur d’Artagnan! Your friend is pleased to be facetious,” said the

Doctor, with some indignation.

“Oh, pray excuse him, sir. He is only absent-minded,” replied

Richard. “My friend Peters informs me that you know this man--this

singular, this incomprehensible villain, whose supposed death is so

extraordinary.”

“He--either the man who died, or this man who is now occupying a high

position in London--was for some years in my employ; but in spite of

what our worthy friend the detective says, I am inclined to think that

Jabez North, my tutor, did actually die, and that it was his body which

I saw at the police-station.”

“Not a bit of it, sir,” said the detective on his rapid fingers,

“not a bit of it! That death was a do--a do, out and out. It was too

systematic to be anything else, and I was a fool not to see there was

something black at the bottom of it at the time. People don’t go and

lay themselves out high and dry upon a heath, with clean soles to their

shoes, on a stormy night, and the bottle in their hand--not took hold

of, neither, but lying loose, you understand; _put there_--not

clutched as a dying man clutches what his hand closes upon. I say this

ain’t how people make away with themselves when they can’t stand life

any longer. It was a do--a plant, such as very few but that man could

be capable of; and that man’s your tutor, and the death was meant to

put a stop to all suspicion; and while you was a-sighin’ and a-groanin’

over that poor young innocent, Mr. Jabez North was a-cuttin’ a fine

figure, and a-captivatin’ a furring heiress, with your money, or your

banker’s money, as had to bear the loss of them forged cheques.”

“But the likeness?” said Dr. Tappenden. “That dead man was the very

image of Jabez North.”

“Very likely, sir. There’s mysterious goin’s on, and some coincidences

in this life, as well as in your story-books that’s lent out at three

half-pence a volume, keep ’em three days and return ’em clean.”

“Well,” continued the schoolmaster, “the moment I see this man I shall

know whether he is indeed the person we want to find. If he should be

the man who was my usher, I can prove a circumstance which will go a

great way, Mr. Marwood, towards fixing your uncle’s murder upon him.”

“And that is----?” asked Richard, eagerly.

But there is no occasion for the reader to know what it is just yet;

so we will leave the little party in the Friar Street surgery to talk

this business over, which they do with such intense interest that the

small hours catch them still talking of the same subject, and Mr.

Percy Cordonner still snowed up in his corner, reading from the loose

leaves the most fascinating _olla podrida_ of literature, wherein

the writings of Charles Dickens, George Sand, Harrison Ainsworth, and

Alexandra Dumas are blended together in the most delicious and exciting

confusion.

CHAPTER IX.

CAPTAIN LANSDOWN OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION WHICH APPEARS TO INTEREST HIM.

LAURENT BLUROSSET was a sort of rage at the West-end of London. What

did they seek, these weary denizens of the West-end, but excitement?

Excitement! No matter how obtained. If Laurent Blurosset were a

magician, so much the better; if he had sold himself to the devil,

so much the better again, and so much the more exciting. There was

something almost approaching to a sensation in making a morning

call upon a gentleman who had possibly entered into a contract with

Sathanus, or put his name on the back of a bit of stamped paper payable

at sight to Lucifer himself. And then there was the slightest chance,

the faintest shadow of a probability, of meeting the proprietor of the

gentleman they called upon; and what could be more delightful than

that? How did he visit Marlborough Street--the proprietor? Had he a

pass-key to the hall-door? or did he leave his card with the servant,

like any other of the gentlemen his pupils and allies? Or did he rise

through a trap in the Brussels carpet in the drawing-room? or slide

through one of the sham Wouvermanns that adorned the walls? At any

rate, a visit to the mysterious chemist of Marlborough Street was about

the best thing to do at this fag-end of the worn-out London season; and

Monsieur Laurent Blurosset was considered a great deal better than the

Opera.

It was growing dusk on the evening on which there was so much

excitement in the little surgery in Friar Street, when a plain close

carriage stopped at Monsieur Blurosset’s door, and a lady alighted

thickly veiled. The graceful but haughty head is one we know. It is

Valerie, who, in the depth of her misery, comes to this man, who is in

part the author of that misery.

She is ushered into a small apartment at the back of the house, half

study, half laboratory, littered with books, manuscripts, crucibles,

and mathematical instruments. On a little table, near a fire that burns

low in the grate, are thrown in a careless heap the well-remembered

cards--the cards which eight years ago foretold the death of the king

of spades.

The room is empty when she enters it, and she seats herself in the

depth of the shadow; for there is no light but the flickering flame of

the low fire.

What does she think of, as she sits in the gloom of that silent

apartment? Who shall say? What forest deep, what lonely ocean strand,

what desert island, is more dismal than the backroom of a London

house, at the window of which looks in a high black wall, or a dreary,

smoke-dried, weird, vegetable phenomenon which nobody on earth but the

landlord ever called a tree?

What does she think of in this dreary room? What _can_ she think

of? What has she ever thought for eight years past but of the man

she loved and murdered? And he was innocent! As long as she had been

convinced of his guilt, of his cruel and bitter treachery, it had been

a sacrifice, that ordeal of the November night. Now it took another

colour; it was a murder--and she a pitiful puppet in the hands of a

master-fiend!

Monsieur Blurosset enters the room, and finds her alone with these

thoughts.

“Madame,” he says, “I have perhaps the honour of knowing you?” He has

so many fair visitors that he thinks this one, whose face he cannot

see, may be one of his old clients.

“It is eight years since you have seen me, monsieur,” she replies. “You

have most likely forgotten me?”

“Forgotten you, madame, perhaps, but not your voice. That is not to be

forgotten.”

“Indeed, monsieur--and why not?”

“Because, madame, it has a peculiarity of its own, which, as a

physiologist, I cannot mistake. It is the voice of one who has

suffered?”

“It is!--it is!”

“Of one who has suffered more than it is the common lot of woman to

suffer.”

“You are right, monsieur.”

“And now, madame, what can I do for you?”

“Nothing, monsieur. You can do nothing for me but that which the

commonest apothecary in this city who will sell me an ounce of laudanum

can do as well as you.”

“Oh, has it come to that again?” he says, with a shade of sarcasm in

his tone. “I remember, eight years ago----”

“I asked you for the means of death. I did not say I wished to die

then, at that moment. I did not. I had a purpose in life. I have still.”

As she said these words the fellow-lodger of Blurosset--the

Indian soldier, Captain Lansdown, who had let himself in with his

latch-key--crossed the hall, and was arrested at the half-open door of

the study by the sound of voices within. I don’t know how to account

for conduct so unworthy of an officer and a gentleman, but the captain

stopped in the shadow of the dark hall and listened--as if life and

death were on the words--to the voice of the speaker.

“I have, I say, still a purpose in life--a solemn and a sacred one--to

protect the innocent. However guilty I may be, thank Heaven I have

still the power to protect my son.”

“You are married, madame?”

“I am married. You know it as well as I, Monsieur Laurent Blurosset.

The man who first brought me to your apartment must have been, if

not your accomplice, at least your colleague. He revealed to you his

scheme, no doubt, in order to secure your assistance in that scheme. I

am married to a villain--such a villain as I think Heaven never before

looked down upon.”

“And you would protect your son, madame, from his father?”

Captain Lansdown’s face gleams through the shadow as white as the face

of Valerie herself, as she stands looking full at Monsieur Blurosset in

the flickering firelight.

“And you would protect your son from his father, madame?” repeats the

chemist.

“The man to whom I am at present married is not the father of my son,”

says Valerie, in a cold calm voice.

“How, madame?”

“I was married before,” she continued. “The son I so dearly love is the

son of my first husband. My second marriage has been a marriage only in

name. All your worthy colleague, Monsieur Raymond Marolles, stained his

hands in innocent blood to obtain was a large fortune. He has that, and

is content; but he shall not hold it long.”

“And your purpose in coming to me, madame----?”

“Is to accuse you--yes, Monsieur Laurent Blurosset, to accuse you--as

an accomplice in the murder of Gaston de Lancy.”

“An accomplice in a murder!”

“Yes; you sold me a poison--you knew for what that poison was to be

used; you were in the plot, the vile and demoniac plot, that was to

steep my soul in guilt. You prophesied the death of the man I was

intended to murder; you put the thought into my distracted brain--the

weapon into my guilty hand; and while I suffer all the tortures which

Heaven inflicts on those who break its laws, are you to go free? No,

monsieur, you shall not go free. Either join with me in accusing this

man, and help me to drag him to justice, or by the light in the sky,

by the life-blood of my broken heart--by the life of my only child, I

swear to denounce you! Gaston de Lancy shall not go unavenged by the

woman who loved and murdered him.”

The mention of the name of Gaston de Lancy, the man she so dearly

and devotedly loved, has a power that nothing else on earth has over

Valerie, and she breaks into a passionate torrent of tears.

Laurent Blurosset looks on silently at this burst of anguish; perhaps

he regards it as a man of science, and can calculate to a moment how

long it will last.

The Indian officer, in the shadow of the doorway, is more affected than

the chemist and philosopher, for he falls on his knees by the threshold

and hides his pale face in his hands.

There is a silence of perhaps five minutes--a terrible silence it

seems, only broken by the heartrending sobs of this despairing woman.

At last Laurent Blurosset speaks--speaks in a tone in which she has

never heard him speak before--in a tone in which, probably, very few

have heard him speak--in a tone so strange to him and his ordinary

habits that it in a manner transforms him into a new man.

“You say, madame, I was an accomplice of this man’s. How if he did not

condescend to make me an accomplice? How, if this gentleman, who, owing

all his success in life to his unassisted villainy, has considerable

confidence in his own talents, did not think me worthy of the honour of

being his accomplice?”

“How, monsieur?”

“No, madame; Laurent Blurosset was not a man for the brilliant Parisian

adventurer Raymond Marolles to enlist as a colleague. No, Laurent

Blurosset was merely a philosopher, a physiologist, a dreamer, a little

bit of a madman, and but a poor puppet in the hands of the man of

the world, the chevalier of fortune, the unscrupulous and designing

Englishman.”

“An Englishman?”

“Yes, madame; that is one of your husband’s secrets: he is an

Englishman. I was not clever enough to be the accomplice of Monsieur

Marolles; in his opinion I was not too clever to become his dupe.”

“His dupe?”

“Yes, madame, his dupe. His contempt for the man of science was most

supreme, I was a useful automaton--nothing more. The chemist, the

physiologist, the man whose head had grown gray in the pursuit of an

inductive science--whose nights and days had been given to the study

of the great laws of cause and effect--was a puppet in the hands of

the chevalier of fortune, and as little likely to fathom his motives

as the wooden doll is likely to guess those of the showman who pulls

the strings that make it dance. So thought Raymond Marolles, the

adventurer, the fortune-hunter, the thief, the murderer!”

“What, monsieur, you knew him, then?”

“To the very bottom of his black heart, madame. Science would indeed

have been a lie, wisdom would indeed have been a chimera, if I could

not have read through the low cunning of the superficial showy

adventurer, as well as I can read the words written in yonder book

through the thin veil of a foreign character. I, his dupe, as he

thought--the learned fool at whose labours he laughed, even while he

sought to avail himself of their help--I laughed at him in turn, read

every motive; but let him laugh on, lie on, till the time at which

it should be my pleasure to lift the mask, and say to him--Raymond

Marolles, charlatan! liar! fool! dupe! in the battle between Wisdom

and Cunning the gray-eyed goddess is the conqueror.”

“What, monsieur? Then you are doubly a murderer. You knew this man,

and yet abetted him in the vilest plot by which a wretched woman was

ever made to destroy the man she loved a thousand times better than her

worthless self!”

Laurent Blurosset smiled a most impenetrable smile.

“I acted for a purpose, madame. I wished to test the effects of a new

poison. Yours the murder--if there was a murder; not mine. You asked me

for a weapon; I put it into your hands; I did not compel you to use it.”

“No, monsieur; but you prompted me. If there is justice on earth,

you shall suffer for that act as well as Monsieur Marolles; if not,

there is justice in heaven! God’s punishments are more terrible than

those of men, and you have all the more cause to tremble, you and the

wretch whose accomplice you were--whose willing accomplice, by your own

admission, you were.”

“And yourself, madame? In dragging us to justice, may you not yourself

suffer?”

“Suffer!” She laughs a hollow bitter peal of mocking laughter, painful

to hear; very painful to the ears of the listener in the shadow, whose

face is still buried in his hands. “Suffer! No, Monsieur Blurosset, for

me on earth there is no more suffering. If in hell the wretches doomed

to eternal punishment suffer as I have suffered for the last eight

years, as I suffered on that winter’s night when the man I loved died,

then, indeed, God is an avenging Deity. Do you think the worst the law

can inflict upon me for that guilty deed is by one thousandth degree

equal to the anguish of my own mind, every day and every hour? Do you

think I fear disgrace? Disgrace! Bah! What is it? There never was but

one being on earth whose good opinion I valued, or whose bad opinion I

feared. That man I murdered. You think I fear the world? The world to

me was him; and he is dead. If you do not wish to be denounced as the

accomplice of a murderess and _her_ accomplice, do not let me quit

this room; for, by the heaven above me, so surely as I quit this room

alive I go to deliver you, Raymond Marolles, and myself into the hands

of justice!”

“And your son, madame--what of him?”

“I have made arrangements for his future happiness, monsieur. He will

return to France, and be placed under the care of my uncle.”

For a few moments there is silence. Laurent Blurosset seems lost

in thought. Valerie sits with her bright hollow eyes fixed on the

flickering flame of the low fire. Blurosset is the first to speak.

“You say, madame, that if I do not wish to be given up to justice

as the accomplice of a murderer, I shall not suffer you to leave

this room, but sacrifice you to the preservation of my own safety.

Nothing more easy, madame; I have only to raise my hand--to wave a

handkerchief, medicated in the manner of those the Borgias and Medicis

used of old, before your face; to scatter a few grains of powder into

that fire at your feet; to give you a book to read, a flower to smell;

and you do not leave this room alive. And this is how I should act, if

I were, what you say I am, the accomplice of a murderer.”

“How, monsieur!--you had no part in the murder of my husband?--you, who

gave me the drug which killed him?”

“You jump at conclusions, madame. How do you know that the drug which I

gave you killed Gaston de Lancy?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, do not juggle with me, Monsieur. Speak! What do

you mean?”

“Simply this, madame. That the death of your husband on the evening

of the day on which you gave him the drugged wine may have been--a

coincidence.”

“Oh, monsieur! in mercy----”

“Nay, madame, it was a coincidence. The drug I gave you was not a

poison. You are guiltless of your husband’s death.”

“Oh, heaven be praised! Merciful heaven be praised!” She falls on her

knees, and buries her head in her hands in a wild burst of tearful

thanksgiving.

While her face is thus hidden, Blurosset takes from a little cabinet on

one side of the fireplace a handful of a light-coloured powder, which

he throws upon the expiring cinders in the grate. A lurid flame blazes

up, illuminating the room with a strange unnatural glare.

“Valerie, Countess de Marolles,” he says, in a tone of solemn

earnestness, “men say I am a magician--a sorcerer--a disciple of the

angel of darkness! Nay, some more foolish than the rest have been so

blasphemous as to declare that I have power to raise the dead. Yours is

no mind to be fooled by such shallow lies as these. The dead never rise

again in answer to the will of mortal man. Lift your head, Valerie--not

Countess de Marolles. I no longer call you by that name, which is in

itself a falsehood. Valerie de Lancy, look yonder!”

He points in the direction of the open door. She rises, looks towards

the threshold, staggers a step forward, utters one long wild shriek,

and falls senseless to the floor.

In all the agonies she has endured, in all the horrors through which

she has passed, she has never before lost her senses. The cause must

indeed be a powerful one.

=Book the Sixth.=

ON THE TRACK.

CHAPTER I.

FATHER AND SON.

THREE days have passed since the interview of Valerie with Laurent

Blurosset, and Raymond de Marolles paces up and down his study in Park

Lane. He is not going to the bank to-day. The autumn rains beat in

against the double windows of the apartment, which is situated at the

back of the house, looking out upon a small square patch of so-called

garden. This garden is shut in by a wall, over which a weak-minded and

erratic-looking creeper sprawls and straggles; and there is a little

green door in this wall, which communicates with a mews.

A hopelessly wet day. Twelve by the clock, and not enough blue in the

gloomy sky to make the smallest article of wearing apparel--no, not

so much as a pair of wristbands for an unhappy seaman. Well to be

the Count de Marolles, and to have no occasion to extend one’s walk

beyond the purple-and-crimson border of that Turkey carpet on such a

day as this! The London sparrows, transformed for the time being into

a species of water-fowl, flutter dismally about the small swamp of

grass-plot, flanked here and there by a superannuated clump of withered

geraniums which have evidently seen better days. The sparrows seem to

look enviously at the bright blaze reflected on the double windows of

the Count’s apartment, and would like, perhaps, to go in and sit on

the hob; and I dare say they twitter to each other, in confidence, “A

fine thing to be the Count de Marolles, with a fortune which it would

take the lifetime of an Old Parr to calculate, and a good fire in wet

weather.”

Yet, for all this, Raymond de Marolles does not look the most enviable

object in creation on this particular rainy morning. His pale fair

face is paler than ever; there are dark circles round the blue eyes,

and a nervous and incessant twitching of the thin lower lip--signs

which never were, and never will be, indications of a peaceful mind. He

has not seen Valerie since the night on which Monsieur Paul Moucée,

_alias_ Signor Mosquetti, told his story. She has remained

secluded in her own apartments; and even Raymond de Marolles has scarce

cared to break upon the solitude of this woman, in whom grief is so

near akin to desperation.

“What will she do, now she knows all? Will she denounce me? If she

does, I am prepared. If Blurosset, poor scientific fool, only plays

his part faithfully, I am safe. But she will hardly reveal the truth.

For her son’s sake she will be silent. Oh, strange, inexplicable,

and mysterious chance, that this fortune for which I have so deeply

schemed, for which I have hazarded so much and worked so hard, should

be my own--my own!--this woman a mere usurper, and I the rightful heir

to the wealth of the De Cevennes! What is to be done? For the first

time in my life I am at fault. Should I fly to the Marquis--tell him

I am his son?--difficult to prove, now that old hag is dead; and even

if I prove it--as I would move heaven and earth to do--what if she

denounce me to her uncle, and he refuse to acknowledge the adventurer,

the poisoner? I could soon silence her. But unfortunately she has been

behind the scenes, and I fear she would scarcely accept a drop of water

from the hands of her devoted husband. If I had any one to help me! But

I have no one; no one that I can trust--no one in my power. Oh, Laurent

Blurosset, for some of your mighty secrets, so that the very autumn

wind blowing in at her window might seal the lips of my beautiful

cousin for ever!”

Pleasant thoughts to be busy with this rainy autumn day; but such

thoughts are by no means unfamiliar to the heart of Raymond de Marolles.

It is from a reverie such as this that he is aroused by the sound of

carriage-wheels, and a loud knocking and ringing at the hall-door. “Too

early for morning callers. Who can it be at such an hour? Some one from

the bank, perhaps?” He paces up and down the room rather anxiously,

wondering who this unexpected visitor might be, when the groom of the

chambers opens the door and announces, “The Marquis de Cevennes!”

“So, then,” mutters Raymond, “she has played her first card--she has

sent for her uncle. We shall have need of all our brains to-day. Now

then, to meet my father face to face.”

As he speaks, the Marquis enters.

Face to face--father and son. Sixty years of age--fair and pale, blue

eyes, aquiline nose, and thin lips. Thirty years of age--fair and

pale, blue eyes, aquiline nose, and thin lips again; and neither of

the two faces to be trusted; not one look of truth, not one glance

of benevolence, not one noble expression in either. Truly father and

son--all the world over, father and son.

“Monsieur le Marquis affords me an unexpected honour and pleasure,”

said Raymond Marolles, as he advanced to receive his visitor.

“Nay, Monsieur de Marolles, scarcely, I should imagine, unexpected;

I cease in accordance with the earnest request of my niece; though

what that most erratic young lady can want with me in this abominable

country of your adoption is quite beyond my poor comprehension.”

Raymond draws a long breath. “So,” he thinks, “he knows nothing

_yet_. Good! You are slow to play your cards, Valerie. I will take

the initiative; my leading trump shall commence the game.”

“I repeat,” said the Marquis, throwing himself into the easy-chair

which Raymond had wheeled forward, and warming his delicate white hands

before the blazing fire; “I repeat, that the urgent request of my very

lovely but extremely erratic niece, that I should cross the Channel

in the autumn of a very stormy year--I am not a good sailor--is quite

beyond my comprehension.” He wears a very magnificent emerald ring,

which is too large for the slender third finger of his left hand, and

he amuses himself by twisting it round and round, sometimes stopping

to contemplate the effect of it with the plain gold outside, when it

looks like a lady’s wedding-ring. “It is, I positively assure you,” he

repeated, looking at the ring, and not at Raymond, “utterly beyond the

limited powers of my humble comprehension.”

Raymond looks very grave, and takes two or three turns up and down the

room. The light blue eyes of the Marquis follow him for a turn and a

half--find the occupation monotonous, and go back to the ring and the

white hand, always interesting objects for contemplation. Presently the

Count de Marolles stops, leans on the easy-chair on the opposite side

of the fireplace to that on which the Marquis is seated, and says, in a

very serious tone of voice--

“Monsieur de Cevennes, I am about to allude to a subject of so truly

painful and distressing a nature, both for you to hear and for me to

speak of, that I almost fear adverting to it.”

The Marquis has been so deeply interested in the ring, emerald

outwards, that he has evidently heard the words of Raymond without

comprehending their meaning; but he looks up reflectively for a moment,

recalls them, glances over them afresh as it were, nods, and says--

“Oh, ah! Distressing nature; you fear adverting to it--eh! Pray don’t

agitate yourself, my good de Marolles. I don’t think it likely you’ll

agitate me.” He leaves the ring for a minute or two, and looks over

the five nails on his left hand, evidently in search of the pinkest;

finds it on the third finger, and caresses it tenderly, while awaiting

Raymond’s very painful communication.

“You said, Monsieur le Marquis, that you were utterly at a loss to

comprehend my wife’s motive in sending for you in this abrupt manner?”

“Utterly. And I assure you I am a bad sailor--a very bad sailor. When

the weather’s rough, I am positively compelled to--it is really so

absurd,” he says, with a light clear laugh--“I am obliged to--to go to

the side of the vessel. Both undignified and disagreeable, I give you

my word of honour. But you were saying----”

“I was about to say, monsieur, that it is my deep grief to have to

state that the conduct of your niece has been for the last few months

in every way inexplicable--so much so, that I have been led to fear----”

“What, monsieur?” The Marquis folds his white hands one over the other

on his knee, leaves off the inspection of their beauties, and looks

full in the face of his niece’s husband.

“I have been led, with what grief I need scarcely say----”

“Oh, no, indeed; pray reserve the account of your grief--your grief

must have been so very intense. You have been led to fear----”

“That my unhappy wife is out of her mind.”

“Precisely. I thought that was to be the climax. My good Monsieur

Raymond, Count de Marolles--my very worthy Monsieur Raymond

Marolles--my most excellent whoever and whatever you may be--do you

think that René Théodore Auguste Philippe Le Grange Martel, Marquis de

Cevennes, is the sort of man to be twisted round your fingers, however

clever, unscrupulous, and designing a villain you may be?”

“Monsieur le Marquis!”

“I have not the least wish to quarrel with you, my good friend. Nay,

on the contrary, I will freely confess that I am not without a certain

amount of respect for you. You are a thorough villain. Everything

thorough is, in my mind, estimable. Virtue is said to lie in the

golden mean--virtue is not in my way; I therefore do not dispute the

question--but to me all mediums are contemptible. You are, in your way,

thorough; and, on the whole, I respect you.”

He goes back to the contemplation of his hands and his rings, and

concentrates all his attention on a cameo head of Mark Antony, which he

wears on his little finger.

“A villain, Monsieur le Marquis!”

“And a clever villain, Monsieur de Marolles--a clever villain! Witness

your success. But you are not quite clever enough to hoodwink me--not

quite clever enough to hoodwink any one blest with a moderate amount of

brains!”

“Monsieur!”

“Because you have one fault. Yes, really,”--he flicks a grain of dust

out of Mark Antony’s eye with his little finger--“yes, you have one

fault. You are too smooth. Nobody ever _was_ so estimable as

you _appear_ to be--you over-do it. If you remember,” continues

the Marquis, addressing him in an easy, critical, and conversational

tone, “the great merit in that Venetian villain in the tragedy of the

worthy but very much over-rated person, William Shakspeare, is, that

he is _not_ smooth. Othello trusts Iago, not because he _is_

smooth, but because he _isn’t_. ‘I know this fellow’s of exceeding

honesty,’ says the Moor; as much as to say, ‘He’s a disagreeable beast,

but I think trustworthy.’ You are a very clever fellow, Monsieur

Raymond de Marolles, but you would never have got Desdemona smothered.

Othello would have seen through you--as I did!”

“Monsieur, I will not suffer----”

“You will be good enough to allow me to finish what I have to say. I

dare say I am prosy, but I shall not detain you long. I repeat, that

though you are a very clever fellow, you would never have got the

bolster-and-pillow business accomplished, because Othello would have

seen through you as I did. My niece insisted on marrying you. Why? It

was not such a very difficult riddle to read, this marriage, apparently

so mysterious. You, an enterprising person, with a small capital,

plenty of brains, and white hands quite unfit for rough work, naturally

are on the look-out for some heiress whom you may entrap into marrying

you.”

“Monsieur de Cevennes!”

“My dear fellow, I am not quarrelling with you. In your position I

should have done the same. That is the very clue by which I unravel the

mystery. I say to myself, what should I have done if fate had been so

remarkably shabby as to throw me into the position of that young man?

Why, naturally I should have looked out for some woman foolish enough

to be deceived by that legitimate and old-established sham--so useful

to novelists and the melodramatic theatres--called ‘Love.’ Now, my

niece is not a fool; ergo, she was not in love with you. You had then

obtained some species of power over her. What that power was I did not

ask; I do not ask now. Enough that it was necessary for her, for me,

that this marriage should take place. She swore it on the crucifix. I

am a Voltairean myself, but, poor girl, she derived those sort of ideas

from her mother; so there was nothing for me but to consent to the

marriage, and accept a gentleman of doubtful pedigree.”

“Perhaps not so doubtful.”

“Perhaps not so doubtful! There is a triumphant curl about your upper

lip, my dear nephew-in-law. Has papa turned up lately?”

“Perhaps. I think I shall soon be able to lay my hand upon him.” He

lays a light and delicate hand on the Marquis’s shoulder as he says the

words.

“No doubt; but if in the meantime you would kindly refrain from laying

it on me, you would oblige--you would really oblige me. Though why,”

said the Marquis philosophically, addressing himself to Mark Antony,

as if he would like to avail himself of that Roman’s sagacity, “why

we should object to a villain simply because he is a villain, I can’t

imagine. We may object to him if he is coarse, or dirty, or puts his

knife in his mouth, or takes soup twice, or wears ill-made coats,

because those things annoy _us_; but, object to him because he

is a liar, or a hypocrite, or a coward? Perfectly absurd! I say,

therefore, I consented to the marriage, asked no unnecessary or

ill-bred questions, and resigned myself to the force of circumstances;

and for some years affairs appeared to go on very smoothly, when

suddenly I am startled by a most alarming letter from my niece. She

implores me to come to England. She is alone, without a friend, an

adviser, and she is determined to reveal all.”

“To reveal all!” Raymond cannot repress a start. The _sang froid_

of the Marquis had entirely deceived him whose chief weapon was that

very _sang froid_.

“Yes. What then? You, being aware of this letter having

been written--or, say, guessing that such a letter would be

written--determine; on your course. You will throw over your wife’s

evidence by declaring her to be mad. Eh? This is what you determine

upon, isn’t it?” It appears so good a joke to the Marquis, that he

laughs and nods at Mark Antony, as if he would really like that

respectable Roman to participate in the fun.

For the first time in his life Raymond Marolles has found his match. In

the hands of this man he is utterly powerless.

“An excellent idea. Only, as I said before, too obvious--too

transparently obvious. It is the only thing you can do. If I were

looking for a man, and came to a part of the country where there

was but one road, I should of course know that he must--if he went

anywhere--go down that road. So with you, my dear Marolles, there was

but one resource left you--to disprove the revelations of your wife

by declaring them the hallucinations of a maniac. I take no credit

to myself for seeing through you, I assure you. There is no talent

whatever in finding out that two and two make four; the genius would

be the man who made them into five. I do not think I have anything

more to say. I have no wish to attack you, my dear nephew-in-law. I

merely wanted to prove to you that I was not your dupe. I think you

must be by this time sufficiently convinced of that fact. If you have

any good Madeira in your cellars, I should like a glass or two, and

the wing of a chicken, before I hear what my niece may have to say to

me. I made a very poor breakfast some hours ago at the Lord Warden.”

Having expressed himself thus, the Marquis throws himself back in

his easy-chair, yawns once or twice, and polishes Mark Antony with

the corner of his handkerchief; he has evidently entirely dismissed

the subject on which he has been speaking, and is ready for pleasant

conversation.

At this moment the door is thrown open, and Valerie enters the room.

It is the first time Raymond has seen Valerie since the night of

Mosquetti’s story, and as his eyes meet hers he starts involuntarily.

What is it?--this change, this transformation, which has taken eight

years off the age of this woman, and restored her as she was on that

night when he first saw her at the Opera House in Paris. What is it?

So great and marvellous an alteration, he might almost doubt if this

indeed were she. And yet he can scarcely define the change. It seems a

transformation, not of the face, but of the soul. A new soul looking

out of the old beauty. A new soul? No, the old soul, which he thought

dead. It is indeed a resurrection of the dead.

She advances to her uncle, who embraces her with a graceful and

drawing-room species of tenderness, about as like real tenderness as

ormolu is like rough Australian gold--as Lawrence Sterne’s sentiment is

like Oliver Goldsmith’s pathos.

“My dear uncle! You received my letter, then?”

“Yes, dear child. And what, in Heaven’s name, can you have to tell me

that would not admit of being delayed until the weather changed?--and

I am such a bad sailor,” he repeats plaintively. “What can you have to

tell me?”

“Nothing yet, my dear uncle”--the bright dark eyes look with a steady

gaze at Raymond as she speaks--“nothing yet; the hour has not yet come.”

“For mercy’s sake, my dear girl,” says the Marquis, in a tone

of horror, “don’t be melodramatic. If you’re going to act a

Porte-St.-Martin drama, in thirteen acts and twenty-six tableaux, I’ll

go back to Paris. If you’ve nothing to say to me, why, in the name of

all that’s feminine, did you send for me?”

“When I wrote to you, I told you that I appealed to you because I had

no other friend upon earth to whom, in the hour of my anguish, I could

turn for help and advice.”

“You did, you did. If you had not been my only brother’s only child, I

should have waited a change in the wind before I crossed the Channel--I

am such a wretched sailor! But life, as the religious party asserts, is

a long sacrifice--I came!”

“Suppose that, since writing that letter, I have found a friend, an

adviser, a grading hand and a supporting arm, and no longer need the

help of any one on earth besides this new-found friend to revenge me

upon my enemies?”

Raymond’s bewilderment increases every moment. Has she indeed gone mad,

and is this new light in her eyes the fire of insanity?

“I am sure, my dear Valerie, if you have met with such a very

delightful person, I am extremely glad to hear it, as it relieves

me from the trouble. It is melodramatic certainly, but excessively

convenient. I have remarked, that in melodrama circumstances generally

are convenient. I never alarm myself when everything is hopelessly

wrong, and villainy deliciously triumphant; for I know that somebody

who died in the first act will come in at the centre doors, and make it

all right before the curtain falls.”

“Since Madame de Marolles will no doubt wish to be alone with her

uncle, I may perhaps be permitted to go into the City till dinner, when

I shall have the honour of meeting Monsieur le Marquis, I trust.”

“Certainly, my good De Marolles; your chef, I believe, understands

his profession. I shall have great pleasure in dining with you. _Au

revoir, mon enfant_; we shall go upon velvet, now we so thoroughly

understand each other.” He waves his white left hand to Raymond, as a

graceful dismissal, and turns towards his niece.

“Adieu, madame,” says the Count, as he passes his wife; then, in a

lower tone, adds, “I do not ask you to be silent for my sake or your

own; I merely recommend you to remember that you have a son, and that

you will do well not to make me your enemy. When I strike, I strike

home, and my policy has always been to strike in the weakest place. Do

not forget poor little Cherubino!” He looks at her steadily with his

cruel blue eyes, and then turns to leave the room.

As he opens the door, he almost knocks down an elderly gentleman

dressed in a suit of clerical-looking black and a white neckcloth, and

carrying an unpleasantly damp umbrella under his arm.

“Not yet, Mr. Jabez North,” says the gentleman, who is neither more nor

less than that respectable preceptor and guide to the youthful mind,

Dr. Tappenden, of Slopperton--“not yet, Mr. North; I think your clerks

in Lombard Street will be compelled to do without you to-day. You are

wanted elsewhere at present.”

Anything but this--anything but this, and he would have borne it,

like--like himself! Thank Heaven there is no comparison for such as he.

He was prepared for all but this. This early period of his life, which

he thought blotted out and forgotten--this he is unprepared for; and he

falls back with a ghastly face, and white lips that refuse to shape

even one exclamation of horror or surprise.

“What is this?” murmurs the Marquis. “North--Jabez--Jabez North? Oh,

I see, we have come upon the pre-Parisian formation, and that,” he

glances towards Dr. Tappenden, “is one of the vestiges.”

At last Raymond’s tremulous lips consent to form the words he struggles

to utter.

“You are under some mistake, sir, whoever you may be. My name is

not North, and I have not the honour of your acquaintance. I am a

Frenchman; my name is De Marolles. I am not the person you seek.”

A gentleman advances from the doorway--(there is quite a group of

people in the hall)--and says--

“At least, sir, you are the person who presented, eight years ago,

three forged cheques at my bank. I am ready, as well as two of my

clerks, to swear to your identity. We have people here with a warrant

to arrest you for that forgery.”

The forgery, not the murder?--no one knows of that, then--that, at

least, is buried in oblivion.

“There are two or three little things out against you, Mr. North,” said

the doctor; “but the forgery will serve our purpose very well for the

present. It’s the easiest charge to bring home as yet.”

What do they mean? What other charges? Come what may, he will be firm

to the last--to the last he will be himself. After all, it is but death

they can threaten him with, and the best people have to die, as well as

the worst.

“Only death, at most!” he mutters. “Courage, Raymond, and finish the

game as a good player should, without throwing away a trick, even

though beaten by better cards.”

“I tell you, gentlemen, I know nothing of your forgery, or you either.

I am a Frenchman, born at Bordeaux, and never in your very eccentric

country before; and indeed, if this is the sort of thing a gentleman is

liable to in his own study, I shall certainly, when I once return to

France, never visit your shores again.”

“_When_ you do return to France, I think it very unlikely you

will ever revisit England, as you say, sir. If, as you affirm, you are

indeed a Frenchman--(what excellent English you speak, monsieur, and

what trouble you must have taken to acquire so perfect an accent!)--you

will, of course, have no difficulty in proving the fact; also that you

were not in England eight years ago, and consequently were not for some

years assistant in the academy of this gentleman at Slopperton. All

this an enlightened British jury will have much pleasure in hearing. We

have not, however, come to try you, but to arrest you. Johnson, call

a cab for the Count de Marolles! If we are wrong, monsieur, you will

have a magnificent case of false imprisonment, and I congratulate you

on the immense damages which you will most likely obtain. Thomson, the

handcuffs! I must trouble you for your wrists, Monsieur de Marolles.”

The police officer politely awaits the pleasure of his prisoner.

Raymond pauses for a moment; thinks deeply, with his head bent on his

breast; lifts it suddenly with a glitter in his eyes, and his thin lips

set firm as iron. He has arranged his game.

“As you say, sir, I shall have an excellent case of false imprisonment,

and my accusers shall pay for their insolence, as well as for their

mistake. In the meantime, I am ready to follow you; but, before I do

so, I wish to have a moment’s conversation with this gentleman, the

uncle of my wife. You have, I suppose, no objection to leaving me alone

with him for a few minutes. You can watch outside in the hall; I shall

not attempt to escape. We have, unfortunately, no trap-doors in this

room, and I believe they do not build the houses in Park Lane with such

conveniences attached to them as sliding panels or secret staircases.”

“Perhaps not, sir,” replies the inflexible police officer; “but they

do, I perceive, build them with gardens”--he walks to the window, and

looks out--“a wall eight feet high--door leading into mews. Not by any

means such a very inconvenient house, Monsieur de Marolles. Thomson,

one of the servants will be so good as to show you the way into the

garden below these windows, where you will amuse yourself till this

gentleman has done talking with his uncle.”

“One moment--one moment,” says the Marquis, who, during the foregoing

conversation has been entirely absorbed in the endeavour to extract a

very obstinate speck of dust from Mark Antony’s nostril. “One moment,

I beg”--as the officer is about to withdraw--“why an interview? Why a

police person in the garden--if you call that dreadful stone dungeon

with the roof off a garden? I have nothing to say to this gentleman.

Positively nothing. All I ever had to say to him I said ten minutes

ago. We perfectly understand each other. He can have nothing to say to

me, or I to him; and really, I think, under the circumstances, the very

best thing you can do is to put on that unbecoming iron machinery--I

never saw a thing of the kind before, and, as a novelty, it is

actually quite interesting”--(he touches the handcuffs that are lying

on the table with the extreme tip of his taper third finger, hastily

withdrawing it as if he thought they would bite)--“and to take him

away immediately. If he has committed a forgery, you know,” he adds,

deprecatingly, “he is not the sort of thing one likes to see about one.

He really is not.”

Raymond de Marolles never had, perhaps, too much of that absurd

weakness called love for one’s fellow-creatures; but if ever he hated

any man with the blackest and bitterest hate of his black and bitter

heart, so did he hate the man standing now before him, twisting a ring

round and round his delicate finger, and looking as entirely at his

ease as if no point were in discussion of more importance than the wet

weather and the cold autumn day.

“Stay, Monsieur le Marquis de Cevennes,” he said, in a tone of

suppressed passion, “you are too hasty in your conclusions. You have

nothing to say to me. Granted! But I may have something to say to

you--and I have a great deal to say to you, which must be said; if

not in private, then in public--if not by word of mouth, I will print

it in the public journals, till Paris and London shall ring with the

sound of it on the lips of other men. You will scarcely care for this

alternative, Monsieur de Cevennes, when you learn _what_ it is

I have to say. Your _sang froid_ does you credit, monsieur;

especially when, just now, though you could not repress a start of

surprise at hearing that gentleman,” he indicates Dr. Tappenden with

a wave of his hand, “speak of a certain manufacturing town called

Slopperton, you, so rapidly regained your composure that only so close

an observer as myself would have perceived your momentary agitation.

You appear entirely to ignore, monsieur, the existence of a certain

aristocratic emigrant’s son, who thirty years ago taught French and

mathematics in that very town of Slopperton. Nevertheless, there was

such a person, and you knew him--although he was content to teach his

native language for a shilling a lesson, and had at that period no

cameo or emerald rings to twist round his fingers.”

If the Marquis was ever to be admired in the whole course of his

career, he was to be admired at this moment. He smiled a gentle and

deprecating smile, and said, in his politest tone--

“Pardon me, he had eighteenpence a lesson--eighteenpence, I assure

you; and he was often invited to dinner at the houses where he taught.

The women adored him--they are so simple, poor things. He might have

married a manufacturer’s daughter, with an immense fortune, thick

ancles, and erratic h’s.”

“But he did not marry any one so distinguished. Monsieur de Cevennes, I

see you understand me. I do not ask you to grant me this interview in

the name of justice or humanity, because I do not wish to address you

in a language which is a foreign one to me, and which you do not even

comprehend; but in the name of that young Frenchman of noble family,

who was so very weak and foolish, so entirely false to himself and to

his own principles, as to marry a woman because he loved, or fancied

that he loved her, I say to you, Monsieur le Marquis, you will find it

to your interest to hear what I have to reveal.”

The Marquis shrugs his shoulders slightly. “As you please,” he says.

“Gentlemen, be good enough to remain outside that door. My dear

Valerie, you had better retire to your own apartments. My poor child,

all this must be so extremely wearisome to you--almost as bad as

the third volume of a fashionable novel. Monsieur de Marolles, I am

prepared to hear what you may have to say--though”--he here addresses

himself generally--“I beg to protest against this affair from first to

last--I repeat, from first to last--it is so intolerably melodramatic.”

CHAPTER II.

RAYMOND DE MAROLLES SHOWS HIMSELF BETTER THAN ALL BOW STREET.

“AND so, Monsieur de Marolles,” said the Marquis, as Raymond closed the

door on the group in the hall, and the two gentlemen were left entirely

alone, “and so you have--by what means I shall certainly not so far

inconvenience myself as to endeavour to guess--contrived to become

informed of some of the antecedents of your very humble servant?”

“Of some of the antecedents--why not say of all the antecedents,

Monsieur de Cevennes?”

“Just as you like, my dear young friend,” replies the Marquis. He

really seems to get quite affectionate to Raymond, but in a far-off,

patronizing, and superb manner something that of a gentlemanly

Mephistopheles to a promising Doctor Faustus;--“and having possessed

yourself of this information, may I ask what use you intend making

of it? In this utilitarian age everything is put to a use, sooner or

later. Do you purpose writing my biography? It will not be interesting.

Not as you would have to write it to-day. Alas! we are not so fortunate

as to live under the Regency, and there are not many interesting

biographies nowadays.”

“My dear Marquis, I really have no time to listen to what I have

no doubt, amongst your own particular friends, is considered most

brilliant wit; I have two or three things to say to you that must be

said; and the sort of people who are now waiting outside the door are

apt to be impatient.”

“Ah, you are experienced; you know their manners and customs! And they

are impatient,” murmured the Marquis, thoughtfully; “and they put you

in stone places as if you were coal, and behind bars as if you were

zoological; and then they hang you. They call you up at an absurd hour

in the morning, and they take you out into a high place, and drop you

down through a hole as if you were a penny put into a savings box; and

other people get up at an equally absurd hour of the morning, or stay

up all night, in order to see it done. And yet there are persons who

declare that the age of romance has passed away.”

“Monsieur de Cevennes, that which I have to say to you relates to your

marriage.”

“My marriage. Suppose I say that I never was married, my amiable

friend?”

“I shall then reply, monsieur, that I not only am informed of all the

circumstances of your marriage, but what is more, I am possessed of a

proof of that marriage.”

“Supposing there was such a marriage, which I am prepared to deny,

there could only be two proofs--the witnesses and the certificate.”

“The witnesses, monsieur, are dead,” said Raymond.

“Then that would reduce the possible proofs to one--the certificate.”

“Nay, monsieur, there might be another evidence of the marriage.”

“And that would be----?”

“The issue of it. You had two sons by that marriage, monsieur. One of

those sons died eight years ago.”

“And the other----?” asked the Marquis.

“Still lives. I shall have something to say about him by-and-by.”

“It is a subject in which I take no sort of interest,” said the

Marquis, throwing himself back into his chair, and abandoning himself

once more to Marc Antony. “I may have been married, or I may not have

been married--it is not worth my while to deny that fact to you;

because if I confess it to you, I can of course deny it the moment I

cross the threshold of that door--I may have sons, or I may not have

sons; in either case, I have no wish to hear of them, and anything you

may have to say about them is, it appears to me, quite irrelevant to

the matter in hand; which merely is your going to prison for forgery,

or your _not_ going to prison for forgery. But what I most

earnestly recommend, my very dear young friend, is, that you take the

cab and handcuffs quietly, and go! That will, at least, put an end

to fuss and discussion; and oh, what an inexpressible relief there

is in that! I always envy Noah, floundering about in that big boat

of his: no new books; no houses of parliament; no poor relations; no

_Times_ newspaper; and no taxes--‘universal as you were,’ as Mr.

Carlyle says; plenty to eat, and everything come to an end; and that

foolish Noah must needs send out the dove, and begin it all over again.

Yes, he began it all over again, that preposterous Noah. Whereby, cab,

handcuffs, forgery, long conversation, and police persons outside that

door; all of which might have been prevented if Noah had kept the dove

indoors, and had been unselfish enough to bore a hole in the bottom of

his boat.”

“If you will listen to me, Monsieur le Marquis, and keep your

philosophical reflections for a more convenient season, there will be

some chance of our coming to an understanding. One of these twin sons

still lives.”

“Now, really, that is the old ground again. We are not getting on----”

“Still lives, I say. Whatever he is, Monsieur de Cevennes--whatever his

chequered life may have been, the guilt and the misery of that life

rest alike on your head.”

The Marquis gives the head alluded to an almost imperceptible jerk,

as if he threw this moral burden off, and looks relieved by the

proceeding. “Don’t be melodramatic,” he remarks, mildly, “this is not

the Porte-St.-Martin, and there are no citizens in the gallery to

applaud.”

“That guilt and that misery, I say, rest upon your head. When you

married the woman whom you abandoned to starvation and despair, you

loved her, I suppose?”

“I dare say I did; I have no doubt I told her so, poor little thing!”

“And a few months after your marriage you wearied of her, as you would

have done of any other plaything.”

“As I should have done of any other plaything. Poor dear child, she

was dreadfully wearisome. Her relations too. Heaven and earth, what

relations! They were looked upon in the light of human beings at

Slopperton, but they were wise to keep out of Paris, for they’d have

been most decidedly put into the Jardin des Plantes; and, really,” said

the Marquis, thoughtfully, “behind bars, and aggravated by fallacious

offers of buns from small children, they would have been rather

amusing.”

“You were quite content that this unhappy girl should share your

poverty, Monsieur le Marquis; but in the hour of your good fortune----”

“I left her. Decidedly. Look you, Monsieur de Marolles, when I married

that young person, whom you insist on dragging out of her grave--poor

girl, she is dead, no doubt, by this time--in this remarkably

melodramatic manner, I was a young man, without a penny in the

world, and with very slight expectations of ever becoming possessed

of one. I am figurative, of course. I believe men of my temperament

and complexion are not very subject to that popular epidemic, called

love. But as much as it was in my power to love any one, I loved this

little factory girl. I used to meet her going backwards and forwards

to her work, as I went backwards and forwards to mine; and we became

acquainted. She was gentle, innocent, pretty. I was very young, and,

I need scarcely say, extremely stupid; and I married her. We had not

been married six months before that dreadful Corsican person took it

into his head to abdicate; and I was summoned back to France, to make

my appearance at the Tuileries as Marquis de Cevennes. Now, what I

have to say is this: if you wish to quarrel with any one, quarrel

with the Corsican person; for if he had never signed his abdication

at Fontainebleau (which he did, by the bye, in a most melodramatic

manner--I am acquainted with some weak-minded people who cannot read

the description of that event without shedding tears), I should never

have deserted my poor little English wife.”

“The Marquis de Cevennes could not, then, ratify the marriage of the

obscure teacher of French and mathematics?” asked Raymond.

“If the Marquis de Cevennes had been a rich man, he might have done

so; but the Restoration, which gave me back my title, and the only

château (my ancestors had three) which the Jacobins had not burned to

the ground, did not restore me the fortune which the Revolution had

devoured. I was a poor man. Only one course was open to me--a rich

marriage. The wealthy widow of a Bonapartist general beheld and admired

your humble servant, and the doom of my poor little wife was sealed.

For many years I sent money regularly to her old mother--an awful

woman, who knew my secret. She had, therefore, no occasion to starve,

Monsieur de Marolles. And now, may I be permitted to ask what interest

you have in this affair, that you should insist on recalling these very

disagreeable circumstances at this particular moment?”

“There is one question you do not ask, Monsieur le Marquis.”

“Indeed; and what is that?” asked the Marquis.

“You seem to have very little curiosity about the fate of your

surviving son.”

“I seem to have very little curiosity, my young friend; I have very

little curiosity. I dare say he is a very worthy individual; but I

have no anxiety whatever about his fate; for if he at all resembles

his father, there is very little doubt that he has taken every care of

himself. The De Cevennes have always taken care of themselves; it is a

family trait.”

“He has proved himself worthy of that family, then. He was thrown

into a river, but he did not sink; he was put into a workhouse and

brought up as a pauper, but by the force of his own will and the help

of his own brain he extricated himself, and won his way in the world.

He became, what his father was before him, a teacher in a school. He

grew tired of that, as his father did, and left England for Paris. In

Paris, like his father before him, he married a woman he did not love

for the sake of her fortune. He became master of that fortune, and

till this very day he has surmounted every obstacle and triumphed over

every difficulty. Your only son, Monsieur de Cevennes--the son whose

mother you deserted--the son whom you abandoned to starve, steal,

drown, or hang, to beg in the streets, die in a gutter, a workhouse, or

a prison--has lived through all, to stand face to face with you this

day, and to tell you that for his own and for his mother’s wrongs,

with all the strength of a soul which those wrongs have steeped in

wickedness--_he hates you!_”

“Don’t be violent,” said the Marquis, gently. “So, you are my son? Upon

my word I thought all along you were something of that kind, for you

are such a consummate villain.”

For the first time in his life Raymond de Marolles feels what it is

to be beaten by his own weapons. Against the _sang froid_ of the

Marquis the torrent of his passionate words dashes, as the sea dashes

at the foot of a rock, and makes as little impression.

“And what then?” says the Marquis. “Since it appears you are my son,

what then?”

“You must save me, monsieur,” said Raymond, in a hoarse voice.

“Save you? But, my worthy friend, how save you? Save you from the cab

and handcuffs? If I go out to those people and say, ‘He is my son; be

so good as to forego the cab and handcuffs,’ they will laugh at me.

They are so dreadfully matter-of-fact, that sort of people. What is to

be done?”

“Only this, monsieur. I must make my escape from this apartment. That

window looks into the garden, from the garden to the mews, through the

mews into a retired street, and thence----”

“Never mind that, if you get there. I really doubt the possibility of

your getting there. There is a policeman watching in that garden.”

Raymond smiles. He is recovering his presence of mind in the necessity

for action. He opens a drawer in the library table and takes out an

air-pistol, which looks rather like some elegant toy than a deadly

weapon.

“I must shoot that man,” he says.

“Then I give the alarm. I will not be implicated in a murder. Good

Heavens! the Marquis de Cevennes implicated in a murder! Why, it would

be talked of in Paris for a month.”

“There will be no murder, monsieur. I shall fire at that man from this

window and hit him in the knee. He will fall, and most likely faint

from the pain, and will not, therefore know whether I pass through the

garden or not. You will give the alarm, and tell the men without that I

have escaped through this window and the door in the wall yonder. They

will pursue me in that direction, while I----”

“You will do what?”

“Go out at the front door as a gentleman should. I was not unprepared

for such an event as this. Every room in this house has a secret

communication with the next room. There is only one door in this

library, as it seems, and they are carefully watching that.”

As he speaks he softly opens the window and fires at the man in the

garden, who falls, only uttering a groan. As Raymond predicted, he

faints with the pain.

With the rapidity of lightning he flings the window up violently,

hurls the pistol to the farthest extremity of the garden, snatches the

Marquis’s hat from the chair on which it lies, presses one finger on

the gilded back of a volume of Gibbon’s _Rome_, a narrow slip of

the bookcase opens inwards, and reveals a door leading into the next

apartment, which is the dining-room. This door is made on a peculiar

principle, and, as he pushes through, it closes behind him.

This is the work of a second; and as the officers, alarmed by the sound

of the opening of the window, rush into the room, the Marquis gives the

alarm. “He has escaped by the window!” he said. “He has wounded your

assistant, and passed through that door. He cannot be twenty yards in

advance; you will easily know him by his having no hat on.”

“Stop!” cries the detective officer, “this may be a trap. He may have

got round to the front door. Go and watch, Johnson.”

A little too late this precaution. As the officers rushed into the

library, Raymond passed from the dining-room door out of the open

street-door, and jumped into the very cab which was waiting to take him

to prison. “Five pounds, if you catch the Liverpool Express,” he said

to the cabman.

“All right, sir,” replied that worthy citizen, with a wink. “I’ve

druv a many gents like you, and very good fares they is too, and a

godsend to a hard-working man, what old ladies with hand-bags and

umbrellas grudges eightpence a mile to,” mutters the charioteer, as he

gallops down Upper Brook Street and across Hanover Square, while the

gentlemen of the police force, aided by Dr. Tappenden and the obliging

Marquis, search the mews and neighbourhood adjoining. Strange to say,

they cannot obtain any information from the coachman and stable-boys

concerning a gentleman without a hat, who must have passed through the

mews about three minutes before.

CHAPTER III.

THE LEFT-HANDED SMASHER MAKES HIS MARK.

“IT is a palpable and humiliating proof of the decadence of the

glories of white-cliffed Albion and her lion-hearted children,” said

the sporting correspondent of the _Liverpool Bold Speaker and

Threepenny Aristides_--a gentleman who, by the bye, was very clever

at naming--for half-a-dozen stamps--the horses that _didn’t_

win; and was, indeed, useful to fancy betters, as affording accurate

information what to avoid; nothing being better policy than to give the

odds against any horse named by him as a sure winner, or a safe second:

for those gallant steeds were sure to be, whatever the fluctuating

fortune of the race, ignominiously nowhere. “It is”, continued the

_Liverpool B. S._, “a sign of the downfalling of the lion and

unicorn--over which Britannia may shed tears and the inhabitants of

Liverpool and its vicinity mourn in silent despair--that the freedom of

England is no more! We repeat (_The Liverpool Aristides_ here gets

excited, and goes into small capitals)--BRITAIN is no longer

FREE! Her freedom departed from her on that day on which the

blue-coated British Sbirri of Sir Robert Peel broke simultaneously into

the liberties of the nation, the mightiest clauses of Magna Charta,

and the Prize Ring, and stopped the operations of the Lancashire Daddy

Longlegs and the celebrated Metropolitan favourite, the Left-handed

Smasher, during the eighty-ninth round, and just as the real interest

of the fight was about to begin. Under these humiliating circumstances,

a meeting has been held by the referees and backers of the men, and

it has been agreed between the latter and the stakeholder to draw the

money. But, that the valiant and admired Smasher may have no occasion

to complain of the inhospitality of the town of Liverpool, the patrons

of the fancy have determined on giving him a dinner, at which his late

opponent, our old favourite and honoured townsman, Daddy Longlegs,

will be in the chair, having a distinguished gentleman of sporting

celebrity as his vice. It is to be hoped that, as some proof that

the noble art of self-defence is not entirely extinct in Liverpool,

the friends of the Ring will muster pretty strong on this occasion.

Tickets, at half-a-guinea, to be obtained at the Gloves Tavern, where

the entertainment will take place.”

On the very day on which the Count de Marolles left his establishment

in Park Lane in so very abrupt a manner, the tributary banquet to the

genius of the Ring, in the person of the Left-handed Smasher, came

off in excellent style at the above-mentioned Gloves Tavern--a small

hostelry, next door to one of the Liverpool minor theatres, and chiefly

supported by the members of the Thespian and pugilistic arts. The

dramatic element, perhaps, rather predominated in the small parlour

behind the bar, where Brandolph of the Burning Brand--after fighting

sixteen terrific broadsword combats, and being left for dead behind

the first grooves seven times in the course of three acts--would

take his Welsh rarebit and his pint of half-and-half in company with

the Lancashire Grinder and the Pottery Pet, and listen with due

solemnity to the discourse of these two popular characters. The little

parlour was so thickly hung with portraits of theatrical and sporting

celebrities, that Œdipus himself--distinguished as he is for having

guessed the dullest of conundrums--could never have discovered the

pattern of the paper which adorned the walls. Here, Mr. Montmorency,

the celebrated comedian, smirked--with that mild smirk only known in

portraits--over the ample shoulders of his very much better half, at

the Pet in fighting attitude. There, Mr. Marmaduke Montressor, the

great tragedian, frowned, in the character of Richard the Third, at

Pyrrhus the First, winner of the last Derby. Here, again, Mademoiselle

Pasdebasque pointed her satin slipper side by side with the youthful

Challoner of that day; and opposite Mademoiselle Pasdebasque, a

gentleman in scarlet, whose name is unknown, tumbled off a burnt-sienna

horse, in excellent condition, and a very high state of varnish, into

a Prussian-blue ditch, thereby filling the spectator with apprehension

lest he should be, not drowned, but dyed. As to Brandolph of the Brand,

there were so many pictures of him, in so many different attitudes,

and he was always looking so very handsome and doing something so

very magnanimous, that perhaps, upon the whole, it was rather a

disappointment to look from the pictures down to the original of them

in the dingy costume of private life, seated at the shiny little

mahogany table, partaking of refreshment.

The theatrical profession mustered pretty strongly to do honour to the

sister art on this particular occasion. The theatre next door to the

Gloves happened, fortunately, to be closed, on account of the extensive

scale of preparations for a grand dramatic and spectacular performance,

entitled, “The Sikh Victories; or, The Tyrant of the Ganges,” which

was to be brought out the ensuing Monday, with even more than usual

magnificence. So the votaries of Thespis were free to testify their

admiration for the noble science of self-defence, by taking tickets

for the dinner at ten-and-sixpence a piece, the banquet being, as Mr.

Montressor, the comedian above-mentioned, remarked, with more energy

than elegance, a cheap blow-out, as the dinner would last the guests

who partook of it two days, and the indigestion attendant thereon would

carry them through the rest of the week.

I shall not enter into the details of the pugilistic dinner, but will

introduce the reader into the banquet-hall at rather a late stage in

the proceedings; in point of fact, just as the festival is about to

break up. It is two o’clock in the morning; the table is strewn with

the _débris_ of a dessert, in which figs, almonds and raisins,

mixed biscuits, grape-stalks, and apple and orange-peel seem rather

to predominate. The table is a very field of Cressy or Waterloo,

as to dead men in the way of empty bottles; good execution having

evidently been done upon Mr. Hemmar’s well-stocked cellar. From the

tumblers and spoons before each guest, however, it is also evident that

the festive throng has followed the example of Mr. Sala’s renowned

hero, and after having tried a “variety of foreign drains,” has gone

back to gin-and-water _pur et simple_. It is rather a peculiar

and paradoxical quality of neat wines that they have, if anything,

rather an untidy effect on those who drink them: certainly there is a

looseness about the hair, a thickness and indecision in the speech,

and an erratic and irrelevant energy and emphasis in the gestures of

the friends of the Smasher, which is entirely at variance with our

ordinary idea of the word “neat.” Yet, why should we quarrel with them

on that account? They are harmless and they are happy. It is surely no

crime to see two gas burners where, to the normal eye, there is only

one; neither is it criminal to try five distinct times to enunciate

the two words, “slightest misunderstanding,” and to fail ignominiously

every time. If anything, that must be an amiable feeling which inspires

a person with a sudden wild and almost pathetic friendship for a man

he never saw before; such a friendship, in short, as pants to go to

the block for him, or to become his surety to a loan-office for five

pounds. Is it any such terrible offence against society to begin a

speech of a patriotic nature, full of allusions to John Bull, Queen

Victoria, Wooden Walls, and the Prize Ring, and to burst into tears in

the middle thereof? Is there no benevolence in the wish to see your

friend home, on account of your strong impression that he has taken

a little too much, and that he will tumble against the railings and

impale his chin upon the spikes; which, of course, _you_ are in

no danger of doing? Are these things crimes? No! We answer boldly, No!

Then, hurrah for neat wines and free trade! Open wide our harbours to

the purple grapes that flourish in the vineyards of sunny Burgundy and

Bordeaux; and welcome, thrice welcome, to the blushing tides which

Horace sang so many hundred years ago, when our beautiful Earth was

younger, and maybe fairer, and held its course, though it is hard to

believe it, very well indeed, without the genius of modern civilization

at the helm.

There had been a silver cup, with one of the labours of Hercules--poor

Hercules, how hard they work him in the sporting world!--embossed

thereon, presented to the Smasher, as a tribute of respect for those

British qualities which had endeared him to his admirers; and the

Smasher’s health had been drunk with three-times-three, and a little

one in; and then three more three-times-three, and another little one

in; and the Smasher had returned thanks, and Brandolph of the Brand

had proposed the Daddy Longlegs, and the Daddy Longlegs had made a

very neat speech in the Lancashire dialect, which the gentlemen of

the theatrical profession had pretended to understand, but had not

understood; and a literary individual--being, in fact, the gentleman

whose spirited writing we have quoted above, Mr. Jeffrey Hallam

Jones, of the _Liverpool Aristides_, sporting and theatrical

correspondent, and constant visitor at the Gloves--had proposed the

Ring; and the Smasher had proposed the Press, for the liberties

of which, as he said in noble language afterwards quoted in the

_Aristides_, the gentlemen of the Prize Ring were prepared

to fight as long as they had a bunch of fives to rattle upon the

knowledge-box of the foe; and then the Daddy Longlegs had proposed the

Stage, and its greatest glory, Brandolph of the Brand; and ultimately

everybody had proposed everybody else--and then, some one suggesting a

quiet song, everybody sang.

Now, as the demand for a song from each member of the festive band

was of so noisy and imperative a nature that a refusal was not only

a moral, but a physical impossibility, it would be unbecoming to

remark that the melody and harmony of the evening were, at best,

fluctuating. Annie Laurie was evidently a young lady of an undecided

mind, and wandered in a pleasing manner from C into D, and from D into

E, and then back again with laudable dexterity to C, for the finish.

The gentleman whose heart was bowed down in the key of G might have

rendered his performance more effective, had he given his statement of

that affliction entirely in one key; and another gentleman, who sang a

comic song of seventeen eight-line verses, with four lines of chorus to

every verse, would have done better if he had confined himself to his

original plan of singing superhumanly flat, instead of varying it, as

he occasionally did, by ringing preternaturally sharp. Of course it is

an understood thing, that in a chorus, every singer should choose his

own key, or where is the liberty of the subject?--so _that_ need

not be alluded to. But all this is over; and the guests of Mr. Hemmar

have risen to depart, and have found the act of rising to depart by no

means the trifle they thought it. It is very hard, of course, in such

an atmosphere of tobacco, to find the door; and that, no doubt, is the

reason why so many gentlemen seek for it in the wrong direction, and

buffet insanely with their arms against the wall, in search of that

orifice.

Now, there are two gentlemen in whom Mr. Hemmar’s neat wines have

developed a friendship of the warmest description. Those two gentlemen

are none other than the two master-spirits of the evening, the

Left-handed Smasher and Brandolph of the Brand--who, by the bye, in

private life, is known as Augustus de Clifford. His name is not written

thus in the register of his baptism. On that malicious document he is

described as William Watson; but to his friends and the public he has

for fifteen years been admired and beloved as the great De Clifford,

although often familiarly called Brandolph, in delicate allusion to his

greatest character.

Now, Brandolph is positively convinced that the Smasher is not in a

fit state to go home alone, and the Smasher is equally assured that

Brandolph will do himself a mischief unless he is watched; so Brandolph

is going to see the Smasher home to his hotel, which is a considerable

distance from the Gloves Tavern; and then the Smasher is coming back

again to see Brandolph to his lodgings, which are next door but two to

the Gloves Tavern. So, after having bade good night to every one else,

in some instances with tears, and always with an affectionate pathos

verging upon tears, Brandolph flings on his loose overcoat, just as

Manfred might have flung on his cloak prior to making a morning call

upon the witch of the Alps, and the Smasher twists about five yards of

parti-coloured woollen raiment, which he calls a comforter, round his

neck, and they sally forth.

A glorious autumn night; the full moon high in the heavens, with a tiny

star following in her wake like a well-bred tuft-hunter, and all the

other stars keeping their distance, as if they had retired to their own

“grounds,” as the French say, and were at variance with their queen

on some matter connected with taxes. A glorious night; as light as

day--nay, almost lighter; for it is a light which will bear looking

at, and which does not dazzle our eyes as the sun does, when we are

presumptuous enough to elevate our absurdly infinitesimal optics to his

sublimity. Not a speck on the Liverpool pavement, not a dog asleep on

the doorstep, or a dissipated cat sneaking home down an area, but is

as visible as in the broad glare of noon. “Such a night as this” was

almost too much for Lara, and Brandolph of the Brand grows sentimental.

“You wouldn’t think,” he murmurs, abstractedly, gazing at the moon, as

he and the Smasher meander arm-in-arm over the pavement; “you wouldn’t

think she hadn’t an atmosphere, would you? A man might build a theatre

there, and he might get his company up in balloons; but I question

if it would pay, on account of that trivial want--she hasn’t got an

atmosphere.”

“Hasn’t she?” said the Smasher, who certainly, if anything, had, in

the matter of sobriety, the advantage of the tragedian. “You’ll have

a black eye though, if you don’t steer clear of that ’ere lamp-post

you’re makin’ for. I never did see such a cove,” he added; “with his

_h_atmospheres, and his moons, and his b’loons, one would think

he’d never had a glass or two of wine before.”

Now, to reach the hotel which the left-handed one honoured by his

presence, it was necessary to pass the quay; and the sight of the water

and the shipping reposing in the stillness under the light of the moon,

again awakened all the poetry in the nature of the romantic Brandolph.

“It is beautiful!” he said, taking his pet position, and waving his arm

in the orthodox circle, prior to pointing to the scene before him. “It

is peaceful: it is we who are the blots upon the beauty of the earth.

Oh, why--why are we false to the beautiful and heroic, as the author of

the Lady of Lyons would observe? Why are we false to the true? Why do

we drink too much and see double? Standing amidst the supreme silences,

with breathless creation listening to our words, we look up to the

stars that looked down upon the philosopher of the cave; and we feel

that we have retrograded.” Here the eminent tragedian gave a lurch, and

seated himself with some violence and precipitation on the kerbstone.

“We feel,” he repeated, “that we have retrograded. It is a pity!”

“Now, who’s to pick him up?” inquired the Smasher, looking round in

silent appeal to the lamp-posts about him. “Who’s to pick him up?

I can’t; and if he sleeps here he’ll very likely get cold. Get up,

you snivelling fool, can’t you?” he said, with some asperity, to the

descendant of Thespis, who, after weeping piteously, was drying his

eyes with an announce bill of the “Tyrant of the Ganges,” and by

no means improving his personal appearance with the red and black

printer’s ink thereof.

How mine host of the Cheerful Cherokee would ever have extricated his

companion from this degraded position, without the timely intervention

of others, is not to be said; for at this very moment the Smasher

beheld a gentleman alight from a cab at a little distance from where he

stood, ask two or three questions of the cabman, pay and dismiss him,

and then walk on in the direction of some steps that led to the water.

This gentleman wore his hat very much slouched over his face; he was

wrapped in a heavy loose coat, that entirely concealed his figure, and

evidently carried a parcel of some kind under his left arm.

“Hi!” said the Smasher, as the pedestrian approached; “Hi, you there!

Give us a hand, will you?”

The gentleman addressed as “you there” took not the slightest notice of

this appeal, except, indeed, that he quickened his pace considerably,

and tried to pass the left-handed one.

“No, you don’t,” said our pugilistic friend; “the cove as refuses to

pick up the man that’s down is a blot upon the English character,

and the sooner he’s scratched out the better;” wherewith the Smasher

squared his fists and placed himself directly in the path of the

gentleman with the slouched hat.

“I tell you what it is, my good fellow,” said this individual, “you may

pick up your drunken friend yourself, or you may wait the advent of

the next policeman, who will do the public a service by conveying you

both to the station-house, where you may finish the evening in your own

highly-intellectual manner. But perhaps you will be good enough to let

me pass, for I’m in a hurry! You see that American vessel yonder--she’s

dropped down the river to wait for the wind; the breeze is springing

up as fast as it can, and she may set sail as it is before I can reach

her; so, if you want to earn a sovereign, come and see if you can help

me in arousing a waterman and getting off to her?”

“Oh, you are off to America, are you?” said the Smasher, thoughtfully.

“Blow that ’ere wine of Hemmar’s! I ought to know the cut of your

figure-head. I’ve seen you before--I’ve seen you somewheres before,

though where that somewheres was, spiflicate me if I can call to mind!

Come, lend a hand with this ’ere friend o’ mine, and I’ll lend you a

hand with the boatman.”

“D--n your friend,” said the other, savagely; “let me pass, will you,

you drunken fool?”

This was quite enough for the Smasher, who was just in that agreeable

frame of mind attendant on the consumption of strong waters, in which

the jaundiced eye is apt to behold an enemy even in a friend, and the

equally prejudiced ear is ready to hear an insult in the most civil

address.

“Come on, then,” said he; and putting himself in a scientific attitude,

he dodged from side to side two or three times, as if setting to his

partner in a quadrille, and then, with a movement rapid as lightning,

went in with his left fist, and planted a species of postman’s knock

exactly between the eyes of the stranger, who fell to the ground as an

ox falls under the hand of an accomplished butcher.

It is needless to say that, in falling, his hat fell off, and as he lay

senseless on the pavement, the moonlight on his face revealed every

feature as distinctly as in the broadest day.

The Smasher knelt down by his side, looked at him attentively for a few

moments, and then gave a long, low whistle.

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “perhaps I couldn’t have done a

better thing than this ’ere I’ve done promiscuous. He won’t go to

America by that vessel at any rate; so if I telegraph to the Cherokees,

maybe they will be glad to hear what he’s up to down here. Come along,”

continued the sobered Smasher, hauling up Mr. De Clifford by the

collar, as ruthlessly as if he had been a sack of coal; “I think I

hear the footsteps of a Bobby a-coming this way, so we’d better make

ourselves scarce before we’re asked any questions.”

“If,” said the distinguished Brandolph, still shedding tears, “if

the town of Liverpool was conducted after the manner of the Republic

of Plato, there wouldn’t be any policemen. But, as I said before, we

have retrograded. Take care of the posts,” he added plaintively. “It

is marvellous the effect a few glasses of light wine have upon some

people’s legs; while others, on the contrary----” here he slid again to

the ground, and this time eluded all the Smasher’s endeavours to pick

him up.

“You had better let me be,” he murmured. “It is hard, but it is clean

and comfortable. Bring me my boots and hot water at nine o’clock; I’ve

an early rehearsal of ‘The Tyrant.’ Go home quietly, my dear friend,

and don’t take anything more to drink, for your head is evidently not a

strong one. Good night.”

“Here’s a situation!” said the Smasher. “I can’t dance attendance on

him any more, for I must run round to the telegraph office and see if

it’s open, that I may send Mr. Marwood word about this night’s work.

The Count de Marolles is safe enough for a day or two, anyhow; for I

have set a mark upon him that he won’t rub off just yet, clever as he

is.”

CHAPTER IV.

WHAT THEY FIND IN THE ROOM IN WHICH THE MURDER WAS COMMITTED.

AT the time that the arrest of the Count de Marolles was taking

place, Mr. Joseph Peters was absent from London, being employed

upon some mission of a delicate and secret nature in the town of

Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy.

Slopperton is very little changed since the murder at the Black Mill

set every tongue going upon its nine-days wonder. There may be a few

more tall factory chimneys; a few more young factory ladies in cotton

jackets and coral necklaces all the week, and in rustling silks and

artificial flowers on Sunday; the new town--that dingy hanger-on of

the old town--may have spread a little farther out towards the bright

and breezy country; and the railway passenger may perhaps see a larger

veil of black smoke hanging in the atmosphere as he approaches the

Slopperton station than he saw eight years ago.

Mr. Peters, being no longer a householder in the town, takes up his

abode at a hostelry, and, strange to say, selects the little river-side

public-house in which he overheard that conversation between the usher

and the country girl, the particulars of which are already known to the

reader.

He is peculiar in his choice of an hotel, for “The Bargeman’s Delight”

certainly does not offer many attractions to any one not a bargeman.

It is hard indeed to guess what the particular delight of the bargeman

may be, which the members of that guild find provided for them in the

waterside tavern alluded to. The bargeman’s delight is evidently not

cleanliness, or he would go elsewhere in search of that virtue; neither

can the bargeman affect civility in his entertainers, for the host and

that one slip-shod, young person who is barmaid, barman, ostler, cook,

chambermaid, and waiter all in one, are notoriously sulky in their

conversation with their patrons, and have an aggrieved and injured

bearing very unpleasant to the sensitive customer. But if, on the other

hand, the bargeman’s delight should happen to consist in dirt, and

damp, and bad cooking, and worse attendance, and liquors on which the

small glass brandy-balls peculiar to the publican float triumphantly,

and pertinaciously refuse to go down to the bottom--if such things as

these be the bargeman’s delight, he has them handsomely provided for

him at this establishment.

However this may be, to “The Bargeman’s Delight” came Mr. Peters on the

very day of the Count’s arrest, with a carpet-bag in one hand and a

fishing-rod in the other, and with no less a person than Mr. Augustus

Darley for his companion. The customer, by the bye, was generally

initiated into the pleasures of this hostelry by being tripped up or

tripped down on the threshold, and saluting a species of thin soup of

sawdust and porter, which formed the upper stratum of the floor, with

his olfactory organ. The neophyte of the Rosicrucian mysteries and of

Freemasonry has, I believe, something unpleasant done to him before he

can be safely trusted with the secrets of the Temple; why, then, should

not the guest of the Delight have _his_ initiation? Mr. Darley,

with some dexterity, however, escaped this danger; and, entering the

bar safely, entreated with the slip-shod and defiant damsel aforesaid.

“Could we have a bed?” Mr. Darley asked; “in point of fact, two beds?”

The damsel glared at him for a few minutes without giving any answer at

all. Gus repeated the question.

“We’ve got two beds,” muttered the defiant damsel.

“All right, then,” said Gus. “Come in, old fellow,” he added to Mr.

Peters, whose legs and bluchers were visible at the top of the steps,

where he patiently awaited the result of his companion’s entreaty with

the priestess of the temple.

“But I don’t know whether you can have ’em,” said the girl, with a more

injured air than usual. “We ain’t in general asked for beds.”

“Then why do you put up that?” asked Mr. Darley, pointing to a board on

which, in letters that had once been gilt, was inscribed this legend,

“Good Beds.”

“Oh, as for that,” said the girl, “that was wrote up before we took

the place, and we had to pay for it in the fixtures, so of course we

wasn’t a-goin’ to take it down! But I’ll ask master.” Whereon she

disappeared into the damp and darkness, as if she had been the genius

of that mixture; and presently reappeared, saying they could have

beds, but that they couldn’t have a private sitting-room because there

wasn’t one--which reason they accepted as unanswerable, and furthermore

said they would content themselves with such accommodation as the

bar-parlour afforded; whereon the slip-shod barmaid relaxed from her

defiant mood, and told them that they would find it quite cheerful, as

there was a nice look-out upon the river.

Mr. Darley ordered a bottle of wine--a tremendous order, rarely known

to be issued in that establishment--and further remarked that he should

be glad if the landlord would bring it in, as he would like five

minutes’ conversation with him. After having given this overwhelming

order, Gus and Mr. Peters entered the parlour.

It was empty, the parlour; the bargeman was evidently taking his

delight somewhere else that afternoon. There were the wet marks of

the bargeman’s porter-pots of the morning, and the dry marks of the

bargeman’s porter-pots of the day before, still on the table; there

were the bargeman’s broken tobacco-pipes, and the cards wherewith

he had played all-fours--which cards he had evidently chewed at the

corners in aggravation of spirit when his luck deserted him--strewn

about in every direction. There were the muddy marks of the bargeman’s

feet on the sandy floor; there was a subtle effluvium of mingled

corduroy, tobacco, onions, damp leather, and gin, which was the perfume

of the bargeman himself; but the bargeman in person was not there.

Mr. Darley walked to the window, and looked out at the river. A

cheerful sight, did you say, slip-shod Hebe? Is it cheerful to look

at that thick dingy water, remembering how many a wretched head its

current has flowed over; how many a tired frame has lain down to find

in death the rest life could not yield; how many a lost soul has found

a road to another world in that black tide, and gone forth impenitent,

from the shore of time to the ocean of eternity; how often the golden

hair has come up in the fisherman’s net; and how many a Mary, less

happy, since less innocent than the heroine of Mr. Kingsley’s melodious

song, has gone out, never, never to return! Mr. Darley perhaps thinks

this, for he turns his back to the window, calls out to the barmaid to

come and light a fire, and proceeds to fill man’s great consoler, his

pipe.

I very much wonder, gentle readers of the fair sex, that you have never

contrived somehow or other to pick a quarrel with the manes of good,

cloak-spoiling, guinea-finding, chivalrous, mutineer-encountering,

long-suffering, maid-of-honour-adoring Walter Raleigh--the importer of

the greatest rival woman ever had in the affections of man, the tenth

Muse, the fourth Grace, the uncanonized saint, Tobacco. You are angry

with poor Tom, whom you henpeck so cruelly, Mrs. Jones, because he came

home last night from that little business dinner at Greenwich slightly

the worse for the salmon and the cucumber--not the iced punch!--oh,

no! he scarcely touched that! You are angry with your better half, and

you wish to give him, as you elegantly put it, a bit of your mind. My

good soul, what does Tom care for you--behind his pipe? Do you think

he is listening to _you_, or thinking of _you_, as he sits

lazily watching with dreamy eyes the blue wreaths of smoke curling

upwards from that honest meerschaum bowl? He is thinking of the girl

he knew fourteen years ago, before ever he fell on his knees in the

back-parlour, and ricked his ancle in proposing to you; he is thinking

of a picnic in Epping Forest, where he first met _her_; when

coats were worn short-waisted, and Plancus was consul; when there was

scaffolding at Charing Cross, and stage-coaches between London and

Brighton; when the wandering minstrel was to be found at Beulah Spa,

and there was no Mr. Robson at the Olympic. He is looking full in your

face, poor Tom! and attending to every word you say--as you think! Ah!

my dear madam, believe me, he does not see one feature of your face,

or hear one word of your peroration. He sees _her_; he sees her

standing at the end of a green arcade, with the sunlight flickering

between the restless leaves upon her bright brown curls, and making

arabesques of light and shade on her innocent white dress; he sees

the little coquettish glance she flings back at him, as he stands in

an attitude he knows now was, if anything, spooney, all amongst the

_débris_ of the banquet--lobster-salads, veal-and-ham pies, empty

champagne-bottles, strawberry-stalks, parasols, and bonnets and shawls.

He hears the singing of the Essex birds, the rustling of the forest

leaves, her ringing laugh, the wheels of a carriage, the tinkling of a

sheep-bell, the roar of a blacksmith’s forge, and the fall of waters

in the distance. All those sweet rustic sounds, which make a music

very different to the angry tones of your voice, are in his ears; and

you, madam--you, for any impression you can make on him, might just as

well be on the culminating point of Teneriffe, and would find quite as

attentive a listener in the waste of ocean you might behold from that

eminence!

And who is the fairy that works the spell? Her earthly name is Tobacco,

_alias_ Bird’s-eye, _alias_ Latakia, _alias_ Cavendish;

and the magician who raised her first in the British dominions was

Walter Raleigh. Are you not glad now, gentle reader, that the sailors

mutinied, that the dear son was killed in that far land, and that the

mean-spirited Stuart rewarded the noblest and wisest of his age with a

life in a dungeon and the death of a traitor?

I don’t know whether Augustus Darley thought all this as he sat over

the struggling smoke and damp in the parlour of the “Bargeman’s

Delight,” which smoke and damp the defiant barmaid told him would soon

develop into a good fire. Gus was not a married man; and, again, he and

Mr. Peters had very particular business on their hands, and had very

little time for sentimental or philosophical reflections.

The landlord of the “Delight” appeared presently, with what, he assured

his guests, was such a bottle of port as they wouldn’t often meet with.

There was a degree of obscurity in this commendation which savoured

of the inspired communications of the priestess of the oracle. Æacida

might conquer the Romans, or the Romans might annihilate Æacida; the

bottle of port might be unapproachable by its excellence, or so utterly

execrable in quality as to be beyond the power of wine-merchant to

imitate; and either way the landlord not forsworn. Gus looked at the

bright side of the question, and requested his host to draw the cork

and bring another glass--“that is,” he said, “if you can spare half an

hour or so for a friendly chat.”

“Oh, as for that,” said the landlord, “I can spare time enough, it

isn’t the business as’ll keep me movin’; it’s never brisk except on wet

afternoons, when they comes in with their dirty boots, and makes more

mess than they drinks beer. A ‘found drowned’ or a inquest enlivens us

up now and then; but Lord, there’s nothing doing nowadays, and even

inquests and drownin’ seems a-goin’ out.”

The landlord was essentially a melancholy and blighted creature; and

he seated himself at his own table, wiped away yesterday’s beer with

his own coat-sleeve, and prepared himself to drink his own port, with

a gloomy resignation sublime enough to have taken a whole band of

conspirators to the scaffold in a most creditable manner.

“My friend,” said Mr. Darley, introducing Mr. Peters by a wave of his

hand, “is a foreigner, and hasn’t got hold of our language yet; he

finds it slippery, and hard to catch, on account of the construction of

it, so you must excuse his not being lively.”

The landlord nodded, and remarked, in a cheering manner, that he didn’t

see what there was for the liveliest cove goin’ to be lively about

nowadays.

After a good deal of desultory conversation, and a description of

several very interesting inquests, Gus asked the landlord whether he

remembered an affair that happened about eight or nine years ago, or

thereabouts--a girl found drowned in the fall of the year.

“There’s always bein’ girls found drowned,” said the landlord moodily;

“it’s my belief they likes it, especially when they’ve long hair. They

takes off their bonnets, and they lets down their back hairs, and they

puts a note in their pockets, wrote large, to say as they hopes as how

he’ll be sorry, and so on. I can’t remember no girl in particular,

eight years ago, at the back end of the year. I can call to mind a many

promiscuous like, off and on, but not to say this was Jane, or that was

Sarah.”

“Do you remember a quarrel, then, between a man and a girl in this very

room, and the man having his head cut by a sovereign she threw at him?”

“We never have no quarrels in this room,” replied the landlord, with

dignity. “The bargemen sometimes have a few words, and tramples upon

each other with their hobnailed boots, and their iron heels and toes

will dance again when their temper’s up; but I don’t allow no quarrels

here. And yet,” he added, after a few moments’ reflection, “there was a

sort of a row, I remember, a many years ago, between a girl as drowned

herself that night down below, and a young gent, in this ’ere room; he

a-sittin’ just as you may be a-sittin’ now, and she a-standin’ over

by that window, and throwin’ four sovereigns at him spiteful, one of

them a-catchin’ him just over the eyebrow, and cuttin’ of him to the

bone--and he a-pickin’ ’em up when his head was bound, and walkin’ off

with ’em as if nothin’ had happened.”

“Yes; but do you happen to remember,” said Gus, “that he only found

three out of the four sovereigns; and that he was obliged to give up

looking for the last, and go away without it?”

The landlord of the “Delight” suddenly lapsed into most profound

meditation; he rubbed his chin, making a rasping noise as he did so,

as if going cautiously over a French roll, first with one hand and

then with the other; he looked with an earnest gaze into the glass of

puce-coloured liquid before him, took a sip of that liquid, smacked his

lips after the manner of a connoisseur, and then said that he couldn’t

at the present moment call to mind the last circumstance alluded to.

“Shall I tell you,” said Gus, “my motive in asking this question?”

The landlord said he might as well mention it as not.