CHAPTER VIII.
IN WHICH PAUL SOMERTON ENTERS UPON A DELICATE, DIFFICULT, AND
DANGEROUS TASK.
Mr. Richard Tallant was a member of several London clubs. The one to which his friend Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs invited him was a third-rate establishment, rapidly degenerating into a mere association of gamblers.
The members met in an evening and kept up in appearance mild whist at shilling points; but large bets were made upon the odd tricks, “each and every.”
Loo was not permitted because it was too much of a gambling game. The Ashford Club assumed a virtue they did not possess. Members might bet a thousand pounds on the odd trick at whist, but they must not play Loo.
It was here that Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs made most of his money, and there was every reason to fear that Richard Tallant was not above helping him. The spirit of gambling had fairly taken possession of Richard’s mind, and he sank with it into the practice of all sorts of vices.
In the City Mr. Richard Tallant was known as a young, wealthy, devil-may-care fellow, a man to know, and a man to fear. He often speculated largely, unknown to his father, and had more than once “rigged” the share market to great advantage. His position gave him excellent opportunities to obtain information which was of financial value, and Shuffleton Gibbs was deep enough to put his friend up to all sorts of stock-jobbing tricks that often turned him in good round sums of money.
One would have thought that this legalised gambling would have been sufficient for Mr. Tallant and his friend Gibbs; but Gibbs was an old card-sharper; he loved the fierce excitement of the table, and there was more certain success in a doctored card and a loaded dice than in stock-jobbing.
You see we don’t at all disguise Mr. Gibbs’s character; he was a thorough-paced blackguard, and Mr. Richard Tallant was graduating very successfully in the Blackguard school. At present he is not aware that Gibbs is indebted to anything but skill for his success at cards: he has never seen the disgraced Oxford roué’s private room.
Paul Somerton’s inquiries had not led him to a knowledge of all that we have here set down; but in less than a month he had come to the conclusion that Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs was a scoundrel, and that Mr. Richard Tallant was not conducting himself in a manner calculated to uphold the honour of his father’s name.
And young Hammerton, the heir to the earldom of Verner: no good could come of his association with Mr. Gibbs and Tallant junior. How persistent Amy was in her inquiries about Mr. Hammerton!
“I can’t see why you be so anxious to know all about their goings on,” said Mr. Thomas Dibble, in one of their once-a-week perambulations.
“Well, never mind, old boy,” said Paul; “you and I are good friends and always will be. Why cannot we have our little confidences like other people?”
“No reason at all,” said Dibble, looking round at a baked-potato stove.
“Have a potato?” said Paul, stopping his friend forcibly as they were turning into Piccadilly.
Mr. Dibble stared at him to see if he were in earnest.
“All right, old boy; I know you like them; have one, don’t mind me.”
Dibble instantly complied with Paul’s request, and was soon engaged in devouring the mealy esculent.
In a few minutes he said, as well as he could speak with a mouthful of the baked temptation,—
“That be kind of you now, Master Paul, very; you knows I likes taters,—we’ve all our likes and dislikes, eh, Mister Somerton? My weakness is Mrs. Dibble and baked pertaters!”
“And pudding, old Dib—now confess.”
Old Dibble laughed, and said Paul was a regular good un; and from this the porter was easily led on to repeat little things which he occasionally saw and heard in Mr. Richard Tallant’s room.
Whilst they were talking, a brougham pulled up to the edge of the pavement, and Paul saw that it was occupied by the Hon. Lionel Hammerton.
“Let us wait here a few moments, Dib; I think I know that gentleman,” said Paul, detaining his friend.
A smart footman leaped from the box, opened the carriage door, and out stepped Mr. Hammerton, who immediately disappeared up a flight of steps which led into a dingy but rather ostentatious building.
“Dib, old boy, we must see what place this is.”
“This?” said Dibble; “why it be the Ashford Club. I know Mister Fencer, who takes care of the rooms; Mrs. Fencer be quite a crony of Mrs. Dibble’s.”
“The Ashford Club, eh? I should like to have a peep at the place inside, Dib.”
“Well, that be easy enough, I s’pose. Let us call and ask Mr. Fencer how he be.”
They went up the flight of stone steps, and found Mr. Fencer, who patronised Mr. Dibble in majestic style.
Fencer was a fussy, pompous person, as was also Mrs. Fencer, who was absent this evening; being, in fact, on a visit to Mrs. Dibble. Fencer, therefore, was fussier and more pompous than usual, and he took Mr. Somerton and Dibble into his little room and treated them to hot gin-and-water, ad libitum.
By-and-by Paul Somerton insiduously got on the blind side of Mr. Fencer, and obtained permission to go and have a peep into the card-room; where Paul, through a half-opened door, saw Mr. Richard Tallant, Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, Mr. Hammerton, and another gentleman, seriously occupied at cards. There were several other little card parties in the room, but Paul had no eyes for any other table than that at which the Hon. Lionel Hammerton was seated. Earl Verner’s brother was evidently the greatest loser, though his partner, Mr. Tallant, was also betting heavily, and unsuccessfully it seemed, with the fourth gentleman, who was unknown to Paul.
This was enough for the present. Paul joined Fencer and Dibble again, making himself particularly agreeable to the former, and promising to pay him another visit on the first opportunity that occurred.
Meanwhile Paul cared for nothing more but to get back to Pimlico and to bed. There was something wrong going on, Paul was sure; he would write to Amy in the morning and reply fully to her inquiries.
Dibble was particularly communicative on the way home, on account of Fencer’s large dose of gin; he told Paul that he would stick to him till death, and tell him anything he knew. He believed Mister Gibbs was no better than a swindler, and his master’s son was surely a reprobate.
“You should have heard what Fencer told me private,” Dibble went on, nodding his head, and clinging hard and fast to Paul Somerton’s arm: “that Mister Gentleman Gibbs is a sort of Jeremy Diddler, sir, depend on it; and master’s son is, they do say, the fastest man about town.”
“Indeed! all right, Dib. I’ll hold you up, old boy,” said Paul, as Dibble plunged and fought his way through an imaginary crowd of obstructions.
Dibble gradually becoming helpless, Paul was compelled to call a cab; and they reached Still Street just in time to find Mrs. Dibble alone and in good humour.
But a change rapidly came over the salubrious calm when Mrs. Dibble noticed Thomas’s neck-tie twisted round to the back of his neck, and saw him gazing at her in a helpless state of idiotic admiration and amazement.
Turning upon Paul she poured out such a volley of declamation against deceit, and the leading of innocence into temptation and sin, that Paul was fain to rush off to bed, and leave poor Dibble to contend with the remainder of the storm. He heard the matrimonial tempest raging for fully an hour after he had retired, until at length it gradually subsided, and peace was proclaimed in the sonorous snore of Dibblonian repose.
It was long past midnight when the last card-party at the Ashford Club broke up. Young Hammerton and Richard Tallant left together, and Hammerton accepted the offer of a bed at Mr. Tallant’s house in Connaught Place, where a cab soon deposited them.
The moon shone peacefully over the park as they crossed it, and made silvery sparkles on the windows of the long, fashionable row of houses.
The trees stood out in the uncertain lights, with early spring leaves upon them. The long rows of lamps looked yellow and out of place in the pure light of the moon; and the distant whistle of a railway engine seemed all the more to mark the morning stillness.
That whistle came home to Lionel Hammerton; it seemed to upbraid him, and at the same time invite him to the country of the Berne Hills. He had promised to return to his brother (who had been lying ill there for several weeks) two days ago; but the infatuation of play had come upon him, and his large losses of this evening had prompted him to endeavour to retrieve his ill-luck on the morrow. Mr. Gibbs had promised him his revenge, and Tallant and he were pledged to visit the Ashford on the next night.
Mr. Tallant was light-hearted enough over his losses, whilst Hammerton sat gloomily thinking of his, and the sick brother, for whom he had a real affection. Mr. Richard Tallant hummed bits of an operatic chorus, and the most popular bars of the latest waltz.
The two card acquaintances said scarcely a word until they bade each other good-night; and before Mr. Tallant was up the next day the Hon. Lionel Hammerton was steaming away on the Great Western to the halls of his fathers by the Berne Hills.
A glorious old place that castle where Earl Verner resided, full of odd nooks and corners, with quaint gables, and grey, ivy-clad turrets; a castle which had held out for months during the great rebellion. The older portion had been supplemented with some new buildings designed in harmony with the ancient architecture of the original building.
Before this history is complete the reader may be called upon to visit Montem Castle: until then it is not necessary, perhaps, to say more than that it was the ancient seat of the Verner family.