CHAPTER XII. Positively the Last Appearance of the Broadwood Grand
England is supposed to be unmusical; but without dwelling on the patronage extended to the organ-grinder, without seeking to found any argument on the prevalence of the Jew’s trump, there is surely one instrument that may be said to be national in the fullest acceptance of the word. The herdboy in the broom, already musical in the days of Father Chaucer, startles (and perhaps pains) the lark with this exiguous pipe; and in the hands of the skilled bricklayer,
‘The thing becomes a trumpet, whence he blows’
(as a general rule) either ‘The British Grenadiers’ or ‘Cherry Ripe’. The latter air is indeed the shibboleth and diploma piece of the penny whistler; I hazard a guess it was originally composed for this instrument. It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the display of his proficiency upon the penny whistle; still more so, that the professional should almost invariably confine himself to ‘Cherry Ripe’. But indeed, singularities surround the subject, thick like blackberries. Why, for instance, should the pipe be called a penny whistle? I think no one ever bought it for a penny. Why should the alternative name be tin whistle? I am grossly deceived if it be made of tin. Lastly, in what deaf catacomb, in what earless desert, does the beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first attempts upon the upper octave.
A really noteworthy thing was taking place in a green lane, not far from Padwick. On the bench of a carrier’s cart there sat a tow-headed, lanky, modest-looking youth; the reins were on his lap; the whip lay behind him in the interior of the cart; the horse proceeded without guidance or encouragement; the carrier (or the carrier’s man), rapt into a higher sphere than that of his daily occupations, his looks dwelling on the skies, devoted himself wholly to a brand-new D penny whistle, whence he diffidently endeavoured to elicit that pleasing melody ‘The Ploughboy’. To any observant person who should have chanced to saunter in that lane, the hour would have been thrilling. ‘Here at last,’ he would have said, ‘is the beginner.’
The tow-headed youth (whose name was Harker) had just encored himself for the nineteenth time, when he was struck into the extreme of confusion by the discovery that he was not alone.
‘There you have it!’ cried a manly voice from the side of the road.
‘That’s as good as I want to hear. Perhaps a leetle oilier in the run,’ the voice suggested, with meditative gusto. ‘Give it us again.’
Harker glanced, from the depths of his humiliation, at the speaker. He beheld a powerful, sun-brown, clean-shaven fellow, about forty years of age, striding beside the cart with a non-commissioned military bearing, and (as he strode) spinning in the air a cane. The fellow’s clothes were very bad, but he looked clean and self-reliant.
‘I’m only a beginner,’ gasped the blushing Harker, ‘I didn’t think anybody could hear me.’
‘Well, I like that!’ returned the other. ‘You’re a pretty old beginner. Come, I’ll give you a lead myself. Give us a seat here beside you.’
The next moment the military gentleman was perched on the cart, pipe in hand. He gave the instrument a knowing rattle on the shaft, mouthed it, appeared to commune for a moment with the muse, and dashed into ‘The girl I left behind me’. He was a great, rather than a fine, performer; he lacked the bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all the honey out of ‘Cherry Ripe’; he did not fear—he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow stood without a rival. Harker listened: ‘The girl I left behind me’ filled him with despair; ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ carried him beyond jealousy into generous enthusiasm.
‘Turn about,’ said the military gentleman, offering the pipe.
‘O, not after you!’ cried Harker; ‘you’re a professional.’
‘No,’ said his companion; ‘an amatyure like yourself. That’s one style of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you’re my age you’ll play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does it go?’ and he affected to endeavour to recall ‘The Ploughboy’.
A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker. Was it possible? Was there something in his playing? It had, indeed, seemed to him at times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it. Was he a genius? Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.
‘No,’ said the unhappy Harker, ‘that’s not quite it. It goes this way—just to show you.’
And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom. When he had played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a lesson to this full-grown flutist—and the flutist under his care was not very brilliantly progressing—how am I to tell what floods of glory brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an amateur himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which the carrier climbed? One significant fact shall paint the situation: thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman listened and approved.
As he listened, however, he did not forget the habit of soldierly precaution, looking both behind and before. He looked behind and computed the value of the carrier’s load, divining the contents of the brown-paper parcels and the portly hamper, and briefly setting down the grand piano in the brand-new piano-case as ‘difficult to get rid of’. He looked before, and spied at the corner of the green lane a little country public-house embowered in roses. ‘I’ll have a shy at it,’ concluded the military gentleman, and roundly proposed a glass. ‘Well, I’m not a drinking man,’ said Harker.
‘Look here, now,’ cut in the other, ‘I’ll tell you who I am: I’m Colour-Sergeant Brand of the Blankth. That’ll tell you if I’m a drinking man or not.’ It might and it might not, thus a Greek chorus would have intervened, and gone on to point out how very far it fell short of telling why the sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention to oakum. But there was no Greek chorus present; and the man of war went on to contend that drinking was one thing and a friendly glass another.
In the Blue Lion, which was the name of the country public-house, Colour-Sergeant Brand introduced his new friend, Mr Harker, to a number of ingenious mixtures, calculated to prevent the approaches of intoxication. These he explained to be ‘rekisite’ in the service, so that a self-respecting officer should always appear upon parade in a condition honourable to his corps. The most efficacious of these devices was to lace a pint of mild ale with twopenceworth of London gin. I am pleased to hand in this recipe to the discerning reader, who may find it useful even in civil station; for its effect upon Mr Harker was revolutionary. He must be helped on board his own waggon, where he proceeded to display a spirit entirely given over to mirth and music, alternately hooting with laughter, to which the sergeant hastened to bear chorus, and incoherently tootling on the pipe. The man of war, meantime, unostentatiously possessed himself of the reins. It was plain he had a taste for the secluded beauties of an English landscape; for the cart, although it wandered under his guidance for some time, was never observed to issue on the dusty highway, journeying between hedge and ditch, and for the most part under overhanging boughs. It was plain, besides, he had an eye to the true interests of Mr Harker; for though the cart drew up more than once at the doors of public-houses, it was only the sergeant who set foot to ground, and, being equipped himself with a quart bottle, once more proceeded on his rural drive.
To give any idea of the complexity of the sergeant’s course, a map of that part of Middlesex would be required, and my publisher is averse from the expense. Suffice it, that a little after the night had closed, the cart was brought to a standstill in a woody road; where the sergeant lifted from among the parcels, and tenderly deposited upon the wayside, the inanimate form of Harker.
‘If you come-to before daylight,’ thought the sergeant, ‘I shall be surprised for one.’
From the various pockets of the slumbering carrier he gently collected the sum of seventeen shillings and eightpence sterling; and, getting once more into the cart, drove thoughtfully away.
‘If I was exactly sure of where I was, it would be a good job,’ he reflected. ‘Anyway, here’s a corner.’
He turned it, and found himself upon the riverside. A little above him the lights of a houseboat shone cheerfully; and already close at hand, so close that it was impossible to avoid their notice, three persons, a lady and two gentlemen, were deliberately drawing near. The sergeant put his trust in the convenient darkness of the night, and drove on to meet them. One of the gentlemen, who was of a portly figure, walked in the midst of the fairway, and presently held up a staff by way of signal.
‘My man, have you seen anything of a carrier’s cart?’ he cried.
Dark as it was, it seemed to the sergeant as though the slimmer of the two gentlemen had made a motion to prevent the other speaking, and (finding himself too late) had skipped aside with some alacrity. At another season, Sergeant Brand would have paid more attention to the fact; but he was then immersed in the perils of his own predicament.
‘A carrier’s cart?’ said he, with a perceptible uncertainty of voice. ‘No, sir.’
‘Ah!’ said the portly gentleman, and stood aside to let the sergeant pass. The lady appeared to bend forward and study the cart with every mark of sharpened curiosity, the slimmer gentleman still keeping in the rear.
‘I wonder what the devil they would be at,’ thought Sergeant Brand; and, looking fearfully back, he saw the trio standing together in the midst of the way, like folk consulting. The bravest of military heroes are not always equal to themselves as to their reputation; and fear, on some singular provocation, will find a lodgment in the most unfamiliar bosom. The word ‘detective’ might have been heard to gurgle in the sergeant’s throat; and vigorously applying the whip, he fled up the riverside road to Great Haverham, at the gallop of the carrier’s horse. The lights of the houseboat flashed upon the flying waggon as it passed; the beat of hoofs and the rattle of the vehicle gradually coalesced and died away; and presently, to the trio on the riverside, silence had redescended.
‘It’s the most extraordinary thing,’ cried the slimmer of the two gentlemen, ‘but that’s the cart.’
‘And I know I saw a piano,’ said the girl.
‘O, it’s the cart, certainly; and the extraordinary thing is, it’s not the man,’ added the first.
‘It must be the man, Gid, it must be,’ said the portly one.
‘Well, then, why is he running away?’ asked Gideon.
‘His horse bolted, I suppose,’ said the Squirradical.
‘Nonsense! I heard the whip going like a flail,’ said Gideon. ‘It simply defies the human reason.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ broke in the girl, ‘he came round that corner. Suppose we went and—what do you call it in books?—followed his trail? There may be a house there, or somebody who saw him, or something.’
‘Well, suppose we did, for the fun of the thing,’ said Gideon.
The fun of the thing (it would appear) consisted in the extremely close juxtaposition of himself and Miss Hazeltine. To Uncle Ned, who was excluded from these simple pleasures, the excursion appeared hopeless from the first; and when a fresh perspective of darkness opened up, dimly contained between park palings on the one side and a hedge and ditch upon the other, the whole without the smallest signal of human habitation, the Squirradical drew up.
‘This is a wild-goose chase,’ said he.
With the cessation of the footfalls, another sound smote upon their ears.
‘O, what’s that?’ cried Julia.
‘I can’t think,’ said Gideon.
The Squirradical had his stick presented like a sword. ‘Gid,’ he began, ‘Gid, I—’
‘O Mr Forsyth!’ cried the girl. ‘O don’t go forward, you don’t know what it might be—it might be something perfectly horrid.’
‘It may be the devil itself,’ said Gideon, disengaging himself, ‘but I am going to see it.’
‘Don’t be rash, Gid,’ cried his uncle.
The barrister drew near to the sound, which was certainly of a portentous character. In quality it appeared to blend the strains of the cow, the fog-horn, and the mosquito; and the startling manner of its enunciation added incalculably to its terrors. A dark object, not unlike the human form divine, appeared on the brink of the ditch.
‘It’s a man,’ said Gideon, ‘it’s only a man; he seems to be asleep and snoring. Hullo,’ he added, a moment after, ‘there must be something wrong with him, he won’t waken.’
Gideon produced his vestas, struck one, and by its light recognized the tow head of Harker.
‘This is the man,’ said he, ‘as drunk as Belial. I see the whole story’; and to his two companions, who had now ventured to rejoin him, he set forth a theory of the divorce between the carrier and his cart, which was not unlike the truth.
‘Drunken brute!’ said Uncle Ned, ‘let’s get him to a pump and give him what he deserves.’
‘Not at all!’ said Gideon. ‘It is highly undesirable he should see us together; and really, do you know, I am very much obliged to him, for this is about the luckiest thing that could have possibly occurred. It seems to me—Uncle Ned, I declare to heaven it seems to me—I’m clear of it!’
‘Clear of what?’ asked the Squirradical.
‘The whole affair!’ cried Gideon. ‘That man has been ass enough to steal the cart and the dead body; what he hopes to do with it I neither know nor care. My hands are free, Jimson ceases; down with Jimson. Shake hands with me, Uncle Ned—Julia, darling girl, Julia, I—’
‘Gideon, Gideon!’ said his uncle. ‘O, it’s all right, uncle, when we’re going to be married so soon,’ said Gideon. ‘You know you said so yourself in the houseboat.’
‘Did I?’ said Uncle Ned; ‘I am certain I said no such thing.’
‘Appeal to him, tell him he did, get on his soft side,’ cried Gideon. ‘He’s a real brick if you get on his soft side.’
‘Dear Mr Bloomfield,’ said Julia, ‘I know Gideon will be such a very good boy, and he has promised me to do such a lot of law, and I will see that he does too. And you know it is so very steadying to young men, everybody admits that; though, of course, I know I have no money, Mr Bloomfield,’ she added.
‘My dear young lady, as this rapscallion told you today on the boat, Uncle Ned has plenty,’ said the Squirradical, ‘and I can never forget that you have been shamefully defrauded. So as there’s nobody looking, you had better give your Uncle Ned a kiss. There, you rogue,’ resumed Mr Bloomfield, when the ceremony had been daintily performed, ‘this very pretty young lady is yours, and a vast deal more than you deserve. But now, let us get back to the houseboat, get up steam on the launch, and away back to town.’
‘That’s the thing!’ cried Gideon; ‘and tomorrow there will be no houseboat, and no Jimson, and no carrier’s cart, and no piano; and when Harker awakes on the ditchside, he may tell himself the whole affair has been a dream.’
‘Aha!’ said Uncle Ned, ‘but there’s another man who will have a different awakening. That fellow in the cart will find he has been too clever by half.’
‘Uncle Ned and Julia,’ said Gideon, ‘I am as happy as the King of Tartary, my heart is like a threepenny-bit, my heels are like feathers; I am out of all my troubles, Julia’s hand is in mine. Is this a time for anything but handsome sentiments? Why, there’s not room in me for anything that’s not angelic! And when I think of that poor unhappy devil in the cart, I stand here in the night and cry with a single heart God help him!’
‘Amen,’ said Uncle Ned.
CHAPTER XIII. The Tribulations of Morris: Part the Second
In a really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive, morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime, even political crime, this work will not have been penned in vain.
He rose on the morrow of his night with Michael, rose from the leaden slumber of distress, to find his hand tremulous, his eyes closed with rheum, his throat parched, and his digestion obviously paralysed. ‘Lord knows it’s not from eating!’ Morris thought; and as he dressed he reconsidered his position under several heads. Nothing will so well depict the troubled seas in which he was now voyaging as a review of these various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader’s convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses; and it will be observed with pity that every individual item would have graced and commended the cover of a railway novel.
Anxiety the First: Where is the Body? or, The Mystery of Bent Pitman. It was now manifestly plain that Bent Pitman (as was to be looked for from his ominous appellation) belonged to the darker order of the criminal class. An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would not have accepted in silence the tragic contents of the water-butt; a man, who was not already up to the hilts in gore, would have lacked the means of secretly disposing them. This process of reasoning left a horrid image of the monster, Pitman. Doubtless he had long ago disposed of the body—dropping it through a trapdoor in his back kitchen, Morris supposed, with some hazy recollection of a picture in a penny dreadful; and doubtless the man now lived in wanton splendour on the proceeds of the bill. So far, all was peace. But with the profligate habits of a man like Bent Pitman (who was no doubt a hunchback in the bargain), eight hundred pounds could be easily melted in a week. When they were gone, what would he be likely to do next? A hell-like voice in Morris’s own bosom gave the answer: ‘Blackmail me.’
Anxiety the Second: The Fraud of the Tontine; or, Is my Uncle dead? This, on which all Morris’s hopes depended, was yet a question. He had tried to bully Teena; he had tried to bribe her; and nothing came of it. He had his moral conviction still; but you cannot blackmail a sharp lawyer on a moral conviction. And besides, since his interview with Michael, the idea wore a less attractive countenance. Was Michael the man to be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave considerations. ‘It’s not that I’m afraid of him,’ Morris so far condescended to reassure himself; ‘but I must be very certain of my ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to novels! I wouldn’t have even begun this business in a novel, but what I’d have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who’d have become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably broken into Michael’s house at night and found nothing but a waxwork image; and then blackmailed or murdered me. But here, in real life, I might walk the streets till I dropped dead, and none of the criminal classes would look near me. Though, to be sure, there is always Pitman,’ he added thoughtfully.
Anxiety the Third: The Cottage at Browndean; or, The Underpaid Accomplice. For he had an accomplice, and that accomplice was blooming unseen in a damp cottage in Hampshire with empty pockets. What could be done about that? He really ought to have sent him something; if it was only a post-office order for five bob, enough to prove that he was kept in mind, enough to keep him in hope, beer, and tobacco. ‘But what would you have?’ thought Morris; and ruefully poured into his hand a half-crown, a florin, and eightpence in small change. For a man in Morris’s position, at war with all society, and conducting, with the hand of inexperience, a widely ramified intrigue, the sum was already a derision. John would have to be doing; no mistake of that. ‘But then,’ asked the hell-like voice, ‘how long is John likely to stand it?’
Anxiety the Fourth: The Leather Business; or, The Shutters at Last: a Tale of the City. On this head Morris had no news. He had not yet dared to visit the family concern; yet he knew he must delay no longer, and if anything had been wanted to sharpen this conviction, Michael’s references of the night before rang ambiguously in his ear. Well and good. To visit the city might be indispensable; but what was he to do when he was there? He had no right to sign in his own name; and, with all the will in the world, he seemed to lack the art of signing with his uncle’s. Under these circumstances, Morris could do nothing to procrastinate the crash; and, when it came, when prying eyes began to be applied to every joint of his behaviour, two questions could not fail to be addressed, sooner or later, to a speechless and perspiring insolvent. Where is Mr Joseph Finsbury? and how about your visit to the bank? Questions, how easy to put!—ye gods, how impossible to answer! The man to whom they should be addressed went certainly to gaol, and—eh! what was this?—possibly to the gallows. Morris was trying to shave when this idea struck him, and he laid the razor down. Here (in Michael’s words) was the total disappearance of a valuable uncle; here was a time of inexplicable conduct on the part of a nephew who had been in bad blood with the old man any time these seven years; what a chance for a judicial blunder! ‘But no,’ thought Morris, ‘they cannot, they dare not, make it murder. Not that. But honestly, and speaking as a man to a man, I don’t see any other crime in the calendar (except arson) that I don’t seem somehow to have committed. And yet I’m a perfectly respectable man, and wished nothing but my due. Law is a pretty business.’
With this conclusion firmly seated in his mind, Morris Finsbury descended to the hall of the house in John Street, still half-shaven. There was a letter in the box; he knew the handwriting: John at last!
‘Well, I think I might have been spared this,’ he said bitterly, and tore it open.
Dear Morris [it ran], what the dickens do you mean by it? I’m in an awful hole down here; I have to go on tick, and the parties on the spot don’t cotton to the idea; they couldn’t, because it is so plain I’m in a stait of Destitution. I’ve got no bedclothes, think of that, I must have coins, the hole thing’s a Mockry, I wont stand it, nobody would. I would have come away before, only I have no money for the railway fare. Don’t be a lunatic, Morris, you don’t seem to understand my dredful situation. I have to get the stamp on tick. A fact.
—Ever your affte. Brother,
J. FINSBURY
‘Can’t even spell!’ Morris reflected, as he crammed the letter in his pocket, and left the house. ‘What can I do for him? I have to go to the expense of a barber, I’m so shattered! How can I send anybody coins? It’s hard lines, I daresay; but does he think I’m living on hot muffins? One comfort,’ was his grim reflection, ‘he can’t cut and run—he’s got to stay; he’s as helpless as the dead.’ And then he broke forth again: ‘Complains, does he? and he’s never even heard of Bent Pitman! If he had what I have on my mind, he might complain with a good grace.’
But these were not honest arguments, or not wholly honest; there was a struggle in the mind of Morris; he could not disguise from himself that his brother John was miserably situated at Browndean, without news, without money, without bedclothes, without society or any entertainment; and by the time he had been shaved and picked a hasty breakfast at a coffee tavern, Morris had arrived at a compromise.
‘Poor Johnny,’ he said to himself, ‘he’s in an awful box! I can’t send him coins, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll send him the Pink Un—it’ll cheer John up; and besides, it’ll do his credit good getting anything by post.’
Accordingly, on his way to the leather business, whither he proceeded (according to his thrifty habit) on foot, Morris purchased and dispatched a single copy of that enlivening periodical, to which (in a sudden pang of remorse) he added at random the Athenaeum, the Revivalist, and the Penny Pictorial Weekly. So there was John set up with literature, and Morris had laid balm upon his conscience.
As if to reward him, he was received in his place of business with good news. Orders were pouring in; there was a run on some of the back stock, and the figure had gone up. Even the manager appeared elated. As for Morris, who had almost forgotten the meaning of good news, he longed to sob like a little child; he could have caught the manager (a pallid man with startled eyebrows) to his bosom; he could have found it in his generosity to give a cheque (for a small sum) to every clerk in the counting-house. As he sat and opened his letters a chorus of airy vocalists sang in his brain, to most exquisite music, ‘This whole concern may be profitable yet, profitable yet, profitable yet.’
To him, in this sunny moment of relief, enter a Mr Rodgerson, a creditor, but not one who was expected to be pressing, for his connection with the firm was old and regular.
‘O, Finsbury,’ said he, not without embarrassment, ‘it’s of course only fair to let you know—the fact is, money is a trifle tight—I have some paper out—for that matter, every one’s complaining—and in short—’
‘It has never been our habit, Rodgerson,’ said Morris, turning pale. ‘But give me time to turn round, and I’ll see what I can do; I daresay we can let you have something to account.’
‘Well, that’s just where is,’ replied Rodgerson. ‘I was tempted; I’ve let the credit out of MY hands.’
‘Out of your hands?’ repeated Morris. ‘That’s playing rather fast and loose with us, Mr Rodgerson.’
‘Well, I got cent. for cent. for it,’ said the other, ‘on the nail, in a certified cheque.’
‘Cent. for cent.!’ cried Morris. ‘Why, that’s something like thirty per cent. bonus; a singular thing! Who’s the party?’
‘Don’t know the man,’ was the reply. ‘Name of Moss.’
‘A Jew,’ Morris reflected, when his visitor was gone. And what could a Jew want with a claim of—he verified the amount in the books—a claim of three five eight, nineteen, ten, against the house of Finsbury? And why should he pay cent. for cent.? The figure proved the loyalty of Rodgerson—even Morris admitted that. But it proved unfortunately something else—the eagerness of Moss. The claim must have been wanted instantly, for that day, for that morning even. Why? The mystery of Moss promised to be a fit pendant to the mystery of Pitman. ‘And just when all was looking well too!’ cried Morris, smiting his hand upon the desk. And almost at the same moment Mr Moss was announced.
Mr Moss was a radiant Hebrew, brutally handsome, and offensively polite. He was acting, it appeared, for a third party; he understood nothing of the circumstances; his client desired to have his position regularized; but he would accept an antedated cheque—antedated by two months, if Mr Finsbury chose.
‘But I don’t understand this,’ said Morris. ‘What made you pay cent. per cent. for it today?’
Mr Moss had no idea; only his orders.
‘The whole thing is thoroughly irregular,’ said Morris. ‘It is not the custom of the trade to settle at this time of the year. What are your instructions if I refuse?’
‘I am to see Mr Joseph Finsbury, the head of the firm,’ said Mr Moss. ‘I was directed to insist on that; it was implied you had no status here—the expressions are not mine.’
‘You cannot see Mr Joseph; he is unwell,’ said Morris.
‘In that case I was to place the matter in the hands of a lawyer. Let me see,’ said Mr Moss, opening a pocket-book with, perhaps, suspicious care, at the right place—‘Yes—of Mr Michael Finsbury. A relation, perhaps? In that case, I presume, the matter will be pleasantly arranged.’
To pass into the hands of Michael was too much for Morris. He struck his colours. A cheque at two months was nothing, after all. In two months he would probably be dead, or in a gaol at any rate. He bade the manager give Mr Moss a chair and the paper. ‘I’m going over to get a cheque signed by Mr Finsbury,’ said he, ‘who is lying ill at John Street.’
A cab there and a cab back; here were inroads on his wretched capital! He counted the cost; when he was done with Mr Moss he would be left with twelvepence-halfpenny in the world. What was even worse, he had now been forced to bring his uncle up to Bloomsbury. ‘No use for poor Johnny in Hampshire now,’ he reflected. ‘And how the farce is to be kept up completely passes me. At Browndean it was just possible; in Bloomsbury it seems beyond human ingenuity—though I suppose it’s what Michael does. But then he has accomplices—that Scotsman and the whole gang. Ah, if I had accomplices!’
Necessity is the mother of the arts. Under a spur so immediate, Morris surprised himself by the neatness and dispatch of his new forgery, and within three-fourths of an hour had handed it to Mr Moss.
‘That is very satisfactory,’ observed that gentleman, rising. ‘I was to tell you it will not be presented, but you had better take care.’
The room swam round Morris. ‘What—what’s that?’ he cried, grasping the table. He was miserably conscious the next moment of his shrill tongue and ashen face. ‘What do you mean—it will not be presented? Why am I to take care? What is all this mummery?’
‘I have no idea, Mr Finsbury,’ replied the smiling Hebrew. ‘It was a message I was to deliver. The expressions were put into my mouth.’
‘What is your client’s name?’ asked Morris.
‘That is a secret for the moment,’ answered Mr Moss. Morris bent toward him. ‘It’s not the bank?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘I have no authority to say more, Mr Finsbury,’ returned Mr Moss. ‘I will wish you a good morning, if you please.’
‘Wish me a good morning!’ thought Morris; and the next moment, seizing his hat, he fled from his place of business like a madman. Three streets away he stopped and groaned. ‘Lord! I should have borrowed from the manager!’ he cried. ‘But it’s too late now; it would look dicky to go back; I’m penniless—simply penniless—like the unemployed.’
He went home and sat in the dismantled dining-room with his head in his hands. Newton never thought harder than this victim of circumstances, and yet no clearness came. ‘It may be a defect in my intelligence,’ he cried, rising to his feet, ‘but I cannot see that I am fairly used. The bad luck I’ve had is a thing to write to The Times about; it’s enough to breed a revolution. And the plain English of the whole thing is that I must have money at once. I’m done with all morality now; I’m long past that stage; money I must have, and the only chance I see is Bent Pitman. Bent Pitman is a criminal, and therefore his position’s weak. He must have some of that eight hundred left; if he has I’ll force him to go shares; and even if he hasn’t, I’ll tell him the tontine affair, and with a desperate man like Pitman at my back, it’ll be strange if I don’t succeed.’
Well and good. But how to lay hands upon Bent Pitman, except by advertisement, was not so clear. And even so, in what terms to ask a meeting? on what grounds? and where? Not at John Street, for it would never do to let a man like Bent Pitman know your real address; nor yet at Pitman’s house, some dreadful place in Holloway, with a trapdoor in the back kitchen; a house which you might enter in a light summer overcoat and varnished boots, to come forth again piecemeal in a market-basket. That was the drawback of a really efficient accomplice, Morris felt, not without a shudder. ‘I never dreamed I should come to actually covet such society,’ he thought. And then a brilliant idea struck him. Waterloo Station, a public place, yet at certain hours of the day a solitary; a place, besides, the very name of which must knock upon the heart of Pitman, and at once suggest a knowledge of the latest of his guilty secrets. Morris took a piece of paper and sketched his advertisement.
WILLIAM BENT PITMAN, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE on the far end of the main line departure platform, Waterloo Station, 2 to 4 P.M., Sunday next.
Morris reperused this literary trifle with approbation. ‘Terse,’ he reflected. ‘Something to his advantage is not strictly true; but it’s taking and original, and a man is not on oath in an advertisement. All that I require now is the ready cash for my own meals and for the advertisement, and—no, I can’t lavish money upon John, but I’ll give him some more papers. How to raise the wind?’
He approached his cabinet of signets, and the collector suddenly revolted in his blood. ‘I will not!’ he cried; ‘nothing shall induce me to massacre my collection—rather theft!’ And dashing upstairs to the drawing-room, he helped himself to a few of his uncle’s curiosities: a pair of Turkish babooshes, a Smyrna fan, a water-cooler, a musket guaranteed to have been seized from an Ephesian bandit, and a pocketful of curious but incomplete seashells.
CHAPTER XIV. William Bent Pitman Hears of Something to his Advantage
On the morning of Sunday, William Dent Pitman rose at his usual hour, although with something more than the usual reluctance. The day before (it should be explained) an addition had been made to his family in the person of a lodger. Michael Finsbury had acted sponsor in the business, and guaranteed the weekly bill; on the other hand, no doubt with a spice of his prevailing jocularity, he had drawn a depressing portrait of the lodger’s character. Mr Pitman had been led to understand his guest was not good company; he had approached the gentleman with fear, and had rejoiced to find himself the entertainer of an angel. At tea he had been vastly pleased; till hard on one in the morning he had sat entranced by eloquence and progressively fortified with information in the studio; and now, as he reviewed over his toilet the harmless pleasures of the evening, the future smiled upon him with revived attractions. ‘Mr Finsbury is indeed an acquisition,’ he remarked to himself; and as he entered the little parlour, where the table was already laid for breakfast, the cordiality of his greeting would have befitted an acquaintanceship already old.
‘I am delighted to see you, sir’—these were his expressions—‘and I trust you have slept well.’
‘Accustomed as I have been for so long to a life of almost perpetual change,’ replied the guest, ‘the disturbance so often complained of by the more sedentary, as attending their first night in (what is called) a new bed, is a complaint from which I am entirely free.’
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said the drawing-master warmly. ‘But I see I have interrupted you over the paper.’
‘The Sunday paper is one of the features of the age,’ said Mr Finsbury. ‘In America, I am told, it supersedes all other literature, the bone and sinew of the nation finding their requirements catered for; hundreds of columns will be occupied with interesting details of the world’s doings, such as water-spouts, elopements, conflagrations, and public entertainments; there is a corner for politics, ladies’ work, chess, religion, and even literature; and a few spicy editorials serve to direct the course of public thought. It is difficult to estimate the part played by such enormous and miscellaneous repositories in the education of the people. But this (though interesting in itself) partakes of the nature of a digression; and what I was about to ask you was this: Are you yourself a student of the daily press?’
‘There is not much in the papers to interest an artist,’ returned Pitman.
‘In that case,’ resumed Joseph, ‘an advertisement which has appeared the last two days in various journals, and reappears this morning, may possibly have failed to catch your eye. The name, with a trifling variation, bears a strong resemblance to your own. Ah, here it is. If you please, I will read it to you:
WILIAM BENT PITMAN, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE at the far end of the main line departure platform, Waterloo Station, 2 to 4 P.M. today.
‘Is that in print?’ cried Pitman. ‘Let me see it! Bent? It must be Dent! SOMETHING TO MY ADVANTAGE? Mr Finsbury, excuse me offering a word of caution; I am aware how strangely this must sound in your ears, but there are domestic reasons why this little circumstance might perhaps be better kept between ourselves. Mrs Pitman—my dear Sir, I assure you there is nothing dishonourable in my secrecy; the reasons are domestic, merely domestic; and I may set your conscience at rest when I assure you all the circumstances are known to our common friend, your excellent nephew, Mr Michael, who has not withdrawn from me his esteem.’
‘A word is enough, Mr Pitman,’ said Joseph, with one of his Oriental reverences.
Half an hour later, the drawing-master found Michael in bed and reading a book, the picture of good-humour and repose.
‘Hillo, Pitman,’ he said, laying down his book, ‘what brings you here at this inclement hour? Ought to be in church, my boy!’
‘I have little thought of church today, Mr Finsbury,’ said the drawing-master. ‘I am on the brink of something new, Sir.’ And he presented the advertisement.
‘Why, what is this?’ cried Michael, sitting suddenly up. He studied it for half a minute with a frown. ‘Pitman, I don’t care about this document a particle,’ said he.
‘It will have to be attended to, however,’ said Pitman.
‘I thought you’d had enough of Waterloo,’ returned the lawyer. ‘Have you started a morbid craving? You’ve never been yourself anyway since you lost that beard. I believe now it was where you kept your senses.’
‘Mr Finsbury,’ said the drawing-master, ‘I have tried to reason this matter out, and, with your permission, I should like to lay before you the results.’
‘Fire away,’ said Michael; ‘but please, Pitman, remember it’s Sunday, and let’s have no bad language.’
‘There are three views open to us,’ began Pitman. ‘First this may be connected with the barrel; second, it may be connected with Mr Semitopolis’s statue; and third, it may be from my wife’s brother, who went to Australia. In the first case, which is of course possible, I confess the matter would be best allowed to drop.’
‘The court is with you there, Brother Pitman,’ said Michael.
‘In the second,’ continued the other, ‘it is plainly my duty to leave no stone unturned for the recovery of the lost antique.’
‘My dear fellow, Semitopolis has come down like a trump; he has pocketed the loss and left you the profit. What more would you have?’ enquired the lawyer.
‘I conceive, sir, under correction, that Mr Semitopolis’s generosity binds me to even greater exertion,’ said the drawing-master. ‘The whole business was unfortunate; it was—I need not disguise it from you—it was illegal from the first: the more reason that I should try to behave like a gentleman,’ concluded Pitman, flushing.
‘I have nothing to say to that,’ returned the lawyer. ‘I have sometimes thought I should like to try to behave like a gentleman myself; only it’s such a one-sided business, with the world and the legal profession as they are.’
‘Then, in the third,’ resumed the drawing-master, ‘if it’s Uncle Tim, of course, our fortune’s made.’
‘It’s not Uncle Tim, though,’ said the lawyer.
‘Have you observed that very remarkable expression: SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE?’ enquired Pitman shrewdly.
‘You innocent mutton,’ said Michael, ‘it’s the seediest commonplace in the English language, and only proves the advertiser is an ass. Let me demolish your house of cards for you at once. Would Uncle Tim make that blunder in your name?—in itself, the blunder is delicious, a huge improvement on the gross reality, and I mean to adopt it in the future; but is it like Uncle Tim?’
‘No, it’s not like him,’ Pitman admitted. ‘But his mind may have become unhinged at Ballarat.’
‘If you come to that, Pitman,’ said Michael, ‘the advertiser may be Queen Victoria, fired with the desire to make a duke of you. I put it to yourself if that’s probable; and yet it’s not against the laws of nature. But we sit here to consider probabilities; and with your genteel permission, I eliminate her Majesty and Uncle Tim on the threshold. To proceed, we have your second idea, that this has some connection with the statue. Possible; but in that case who is the advertiser? Not Ricardi, for he knows your address; not the person who got the box, for he doesn’t know your name. The vanman, I hear you suggest, in a lucid interval. He might have got your name, and got it incorrectly, at the station; and he might have failed to get your address. I grant the vanman. But a question: Do you really wish to meet the vanman?’
‘Why should I not?’ asked Pitman.
‘If he wants to meet you,’ replied Michael, ‘observe this: it is because he has found his address-book, has been to the house that got the statue, and-mark my words!—is moving at the instigation of the murderer.’
‘I should be very sorry to think so,’ said Pitman; ‘but I still consider it my duty to Mr Sernitopolis. . .’
‘Pitman,’ interrupted Michael, ‘this will not do. Don’t seek to impose on your legal adviser; don’t try to pass yourself off for the Duke of Wellington, for that is not your line. Come, I wager a dinner I can read your thoughts. You still believe it’s Uncle Tim.’
‘Mr Finsbury,’ said the drawing-master, colouring, ‘you are not a man in narrow circumstances, and you have no family. Guendolen is growing up, a very promising girl—she was confirmed this year; and I think you will be able to enter into my feelings as a parent when I tell you she is quite ignorant of dancing. The boys are at the board school, which is all very well in its way; at least, I am the last man in the world to criticize the institutions of my native land. But I had fondly hoped that Harold might become a professional musician; and little Otho shows a quite remarkable vocation for the Church. I am not exactly an ambitious man...’
‘Well, well,’ interrupted Michael. ‘Be explicit; you think it’s Uncle Tim?’
‘It might be Uncle Tim,’ insisted Pitman, ‘and if it were, and I neglected the occasion, how could I ever look my children in the face? I do not refer to Mrs Pitman. . .’
‘No, you never do,’ said Michael.
‘. . . but in the case of her own brother returning from Ballarat. . .’ continued Pitman.
‘. . . with his mind unhinged,’ put in the lawyer.
‘. . . returning from Ballarat with a large fortune, her impatience may be more easily imagined than described,’ concluded Pitman.
‘All right,’ said Michael, ‘be it so. And what do you propose to do?’
‘I am going to Waterloo,’ said Pitman, ‘in disguise.’
‘All by your little self?’ enquired the lawyer. ‘Well, I hope you think it safe. Mind and send me word from the police cells.’
‘O, Mr Finsbury, I had ventured to hope—perhaps you might be induced to—to make one of us,’ faltered Pitman.
‘Disguise myself on Sunday?’ cried Michael. ‘How little you understand my principles!’
‘Mr Finsbury, I have no means of showing you my gratitude; but let me ask you one question,’ said Pitman. ‘If I were a very rich client, would you not take the risk?’
‘Diamond, Diamond, you know not what you do!’ cried Michael. ‘Why, man, do you suppose I make a practice of cutting about London with my clients in disguise? Do you suppose money would induce me to touch this business with a stick? I give you my word of honour, it would not. But I own I have a real curiosity to see how you conduct this interview—that tempts me; it tempts me, Pitman, more than gold—it should be exquisitely rich.’ And suddenly Michael laughed. ‘Well, Pitman,’ said he, ‘have all the truck ready in the studio. I’ll go.’
About twenty minutes after two, on this eventful day, the vast and gloomy shed of Waterloo lay, like the temple of a dead religion, silent and deserted. Here and there at one of the platforms, a train lay becalmed; here and there a wandering footfall echoed; the cab-horses outside stamped with startling reverberations on the stones; or from the neighbouring wilderness of railway an engine snorted forth a whistle. The main-line departure platform slumbered like the rest; the booking-hutches closed; the backs of Mr Haggard’s novels, with which upon a weekday the bookstall shines emblazoned, discreetly hidden behind dingy shutters; the rare officials, undisguisedly somnambulant; and the customary loiterers, even to the middle-aged woman with the ulster and the handbag, fled to more congenial scenes. As in the inmost dells of some small tropic island the throbbing of the ocean lingers, so here a faint pervading hum and trepidation told in every corner of surrounding London.
At the hour already named, persons acquainted with John Dickson, of Ballarat, and Ezra Thomas, of the United States of America, would have been cheered to behold them enter through the booking-office.
‘What names are we to take?’ enquired the latter, anxiously adjusting the window-glass spectacles which he had been suffered on this occasion to assume.
‘There’s no choice for you, my boy,’ returned Michael. ‘Bent Pitman or nothing. As for me, I think I look as if I might be called Appleby; something agreeably old-world about Appleby—breathes of Devonshire cider. Talking of which, suppose you wet your whistle? the interview is likely to be trying.’
‘I think I’ll wait till afterwards,’ returned Pitman; ‘on the whole, I think I’ll wait till the thing’s over. I don’t know if it strikes you as it does me; but the place seems deserted and silent, Mr Finsbury, and filled with very singular echoes.’
‘Kind of Jack-in-the-box feeling?’ enquired Michael, ‘as if all these empty trains might be filled with policemen waiting for a signal? and Sir Charles Warren perched among the girders with a silver whistle to his lips? It’s guilt, Pitman.’
In this uneasy frame of mind they walked nearly the whole length of the departure platform, and at the western extremity became aware of a slender figure standing back against a pillar. The figure was plainly sunk into a deep abstraction; he was not aware of their approach, but gazed far abroad over the sunlit station. Michael stopped.
‘Holloa!’ said he, ‘can that be your advertiser? If so, I’m done with it.’ And then, on second thoughts: ‘Not so, either,’ he resumed more cheerfully. ‘Here, turn your back a moment. So. Give me the specs.’
‘But you agreed I was to have them,’ protested Pitman.
‘Ah, but that man knows me,’ said Michael.
‘Does he? what’s his name?’ cried Pitman.
‘O, he took me into his confidence,’ returned the lawyer. ‘But I may say one thing: if he’s your advertiser (and he may be, for he seems to have been seized with criminal lunacy) you can go ahead with a clear conscience, for I hold him in the hollow of my hand.’
The change effected, and Pitman comforted with this good news, the pair drew near to Morris.
‘Are you looking for Mr William Bent Pitman?’ enquired the drawing-master. ‘I am he.’
Morris raised his head. He saw before him, in the speaker, a person of almost indescribable insignificance, in white spats and a shirt cut indecently low. A little behind, a second and more burly figure offered little to criticism, except ulster, whiskers, spectacles, and deerstalker hat. Since he had decided to call up devils from the underworld of London, Morris had pondered deeply on the probabilities of their appearance. His first emotion, like that of Charoba when she beheld the sea, was one of disappointment; his second did more justice to the case. Never before had he seen a couple dressed like these; he had struck a new stratum.
‘I must speak with you alone,’ said he.
‘You need not mind Mr Appleby,’ returned Pitman. ‘He knows all.’
‘All? Do you know what I am here to speak of?’ enquired Morris—. ‘The barrel.’
Pitman turned pale, but it was with manly indignation. ‘You are the man!’ he cried. ‘You very wicked person.’
‘Am I to speak before him?’ asked Morris, disregarding these severe expressions.
‘He has been present throughout,’ said Pitman. ‘He opened the barrel; your guilty secret is already known to him, as well as to your Maker and myself.’
‘Well, then,’ said Morris, ‘what have you done with the money?’
‘I know nothing about any money,’ said Pitman.
‘You needn’t try that on,’ said Morris. ‘I have tracked you down; you came to the station sacrilegiously disguised as a clergyman, procured my barrel, opened it, rifled the body, and cashed the bill. I have been to the bank, I tell you! I have followed you step by step, and your denials are childish and absurd.’
‘Come, come, Morris, keep your temper,’ said Mr Appleby.
‘Michael!’ cried Morris, ‘Michael here too!’
‘Here too,’ echoed the lawyer; ‘here and everywhere, my good fellow; every step you take is counted; trained detectives follow you like your shadow; they report to me every three-quarters of an hour; no expense is spared.’
Morris’s face took on a hue of dirty grey. ‘Well, I don’t care; I have the less reserve to keep,’ he cried. ‘That man cashed my bill; it’s a theft, and I want the money back.’
‘Do you think I would lie to you, Morris?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t know,’ said his cousin. ‘I want my money.’
‘It was I alone who touched the body,’ began Michael.
‘You? Michael!’ cried Morris, starting back. ‘Then why haven’t you declared the death?’ ‘What the devil do you mean?’ asked Michael.
‘Am I mad? or are you?’ cried Morris.
‘I think it must be Pitman,’ said Michael.
The three men stared at each other, wild-eyed.
‘This is dreadful,’ said Morris, ‘dreadful. I do not understand one word that is addressed to me.’
‘I give you my word of honour, no more do I,’ said Michael.
‘And in God’s name, why whiskers?’ cried Morris, pointing in a ghastly manner at his cousin. ‘Does my brain reel? How whiskers?’
‘O, that’s a matter of detail,’ said Michael.
There was another silence, during which Morris appeared to himself to be shot in a trapeze as high as St Paul’s, and as low as Baker Street Station.
‘Let us recapitulate,’ said Michael, ‘unless it’s really a dream, in which case I wish Teena would call me for breakfast. My friend Pitman, here, received a barrel which, it now appears, was meant for you. The barrel contained the body of a man. How or why you killed him...’
‘I never laid a hand on him,’ protested Morris. ‘This is what I have dreaded all along. But think, Michael! I’m not that kind of man; with all my faults, I wouldn’t touch a hair of anybody’s head, and it was all dead loss to me. He got killed in that vile accident.’
Suddenly Michael was seized by mirth so prolonged and excessive that his companions supposed beyond a doubt his reason had deserted him. Again and again he struggled to compose himself, and again and again laughter overwhelmed him like a tide. In all this maddening interview there had been no more spectral feature than this of Michael’s merriment; and Pitman and Morris, drawn together by the common fear, exchanged glances of anxiety.
‘Morris,’ gasped the lawyer, when he was at last able to articulate, ‘hold on, I see it all now. I can make it clear in one word. Here’s the key: I NEVER GUESSED IT WAS UNCLE JOSEPH TILL THIS MOMENT.’
This remark produced an instant lightening of the tension for Morris. For Pitman it quenched the last ray of hope and daylight. Uncle Joseph, whom he had left an hour ago in Norfolk Street, pasting newspaper cuttings?—it?—the dead body?—then who was he, Pitman? and was this Waterloo Station or Colney Hatch?
‘To be sure!’ cried Morris; ‘it was badly smashed, I know. How stupid not to think of that! Why, then, all’s clear; and, my dear Michael, I’ll tell you what—we’re saved, both saved. You get the tontine—I don’t grudge it you the least—and I get the leather business, which is really beginning to look up. Declare the death at once, don’t mind me in the smallest, don’t consider me; declare the death, and we’re all right.’
‘Ah, but I can’t declare it,’ said Michael.
‘Why not?’ cried Morris.
‘I can’t produce the corpus, Morris. I’ve lost it,’ said the lawyer.
‘Stop a bit,’ ejaculated the leather merchant. ‘How is this? It’s not possible. I lost it.’
‘Well, I’ve lost it too, my son,’ said Michael, with extreme serenity. ‘Not recognizing it, you see, and suspecting something irregular in its origin, I got rid of—what shall we say?—got rid of the proceeds at once.’
‘You got rid of the body? What made you do that?’ walled Morris. ‘But you can get it again? You know where it is?’
‘I wish I did, Morris, and you may believe me there, for it would be a small sum in my pocket; but the fact is, I don’t,’ said Michael.
‘Good Lord,’ said Morris, addressing heaven and earth, ‘good Lord, I’ve lost the leather business!’
Michael was once more shaken with laughter.
‘Why do you laugh, you fool?’ cried his cousin, ‘you lose more than I. You’ve bungled it worse than even I did. If you had a spark of feeling, you would be shaking in your boots with vexation. But I’ll tell you one thing—I’ll have that eight hundred pound—I’ll have that and go to Swan River—that’s mine, anyway, and your friend must have forged to cash it. Give me the eight hundred, here, upon this platform, or I go straight to Scotland Yard and turn the whole disreputable story inside out.’
‘Morris,’ said Michael, laying his hand upon his shoulder, ‘hear reason. It wasn’t us, it was the other man. We never even searched the body.’
‘The other man?’ repeated Morris.
‘Yes, the other man. We palmed Uncle Joseph off upon another man,’ said Michael.
‘You what? You palmed him off? That’s surely a singular expression,’ said Morris.
‘Yes, palmed him off for a piano,’ said Michael with perfect simplicity. ‘Remarkably full, rich tone,’ he added.
Morris carried his hand to his brow and looked at it; it was wet with sweat. ‘Fever,’ said he.
‘No, it was a Broadwood grand,’ said Michael. ‘Pitman here will tell you if it was genuine or not.’
‘Eh? O! O yes, I believe it was a genuine Broadwood; I have played upon it several times myself,’ said Pitman. ‘The three-letter E was broken.’
‘Don’t say anything more about pianos,’ said Morris, with a strong shudder; ‘I’m not the man I used to be! This—this other man—let’s come to him, if I can only manage to follow. Who is he? Where can I get hold of him?’
‘Ah, that’s the rub,’ said Michael. ‘He’s been in possession of the desired article, let me see—since Wednesday, about four o’clock, and is now, I should imagine, on his way to the isles of Javan and Gadire.’
‘Michael,’ said Morris pleadingly, ‘I am in a very weak state, and I beg your consideration for a kinsman. Say it slowly again, and be sure you are correct. When did he get it?’
Michael repeated his statement.
‘Yes, that’s the worst thing yet,’ said Morris, drawing in his breath.
‘What is?’ asked the lawyer.
‘Even the dates are sheer nonsense,’ said the leather merchant.
‘The bill was cashed on Tuesday. There’s not a gleam of reason in the whole transaction.’
A young gentleman, who had passed the trio and suddenly started and turned back, at this moment laid a heavy hand on Michael’s shoulder.
‘Aha! so this is Mr Dickson?’ said he.
The trump of judgement could scarce have rung with a more dreadful note in the ears of Pitman and the lawyer. To Morris this erroneous name seemed a legitimate enough continuation of the nightmare in which he had so long been wandering. And when Michael, with his brand-new bushy whiskers, broke from the grasp of the stranger and turned to run, and the weird little shaven creature in the low-necked shirt followed his example with a bird-like screech, and the stranger (finding the rest of his prey escape him) pounced with a rude grasp on Morris himself, that gentleman’s frame of mind might be very nearly expressed in the colloquial phrase: ‘I told you so!’
‘I have one of the gang,’ said Gideon Forsyth.
‘I do not understand,’ said Morris dully.
‘O, I will make you understand,’ returned Gideon grimly.
‘You will be a good friend to me if you can make me understand anything,’ cried Morris, with a sudden energy of conviction.
‘I don’t know you personally, do I?’ continued Gideon, examining his unresisting prisoner. ‘Never mind, I know your friends. They are your friends, are they not?’
‘I do not understand you,’ said Morris.
‘You had possibly something to do with a piano?’ suggested Gideon.
‘A piano!’ cried Morris, convulsively clasping Gideon by the arm. ‘Then you’re the other man! Where is it? Where is the body? And did you cash the draft?’
‘Where is the body? This is very strange,’ mused Gideon. ‘Do you want the body?’
‘Want it?’ cried Morris. ‘My whole fortune depends upon it! I lost it. Where is it? Take me to it?
‘O, you want it, do you? And the other man, Dickson—does he want it?’ enquired Gideon.
‘Who do you mean by Dickson? O, Michael Finsbury! Why, of course he does! He lost it too. If he had it, he’d have won the tontine tomorrow.’
‘Michael Finsbury! Not the solicitor?’ cried Gideon. ‘Yes, the solicitor,’ said Morris. ‘But where is the body?’
‘Then that is why he sent the brief! What is Mr Finsbury’s private address?’ asked Gideon.
‘233 King’s Road. What brief? Where are you going? Where is the body?’ cried Morris, clinging to Gideon’s arm.
‘I have lost it myself,’ returned Gideon, and ran out of the station.