Book + 

V + 

The Dumb Detective + 

I + 

The Count de Marolles at Home + 

The denizens of Friar Street and such localities, being in the habit of waking in the morning to the odour of melted tallow and boiling soap, and of going to sleep at night with the smell of burning bones under their noses, can of course have nothing of an external nature in common with the inhabitants of Park Lane and its vicinity; for the gratification of whose olfactory nerves exotics live short and unnatural lives, on staircases, in boudoirs, and in conservatories of rich plate-glass and fairy architecture, where perfumed waters play in gilded fountains through the long summer days. + 

It might be imagined, then, that the common griefs and vulgar sorrows⁠—such as hopeless love and torturing jealousy, sickness, or death, or madness, or despair⁠—would be also banished from the regions of Park Lane, and entirely confined to the purlieus of Friar Street. Any person with a proper sense of the fitness of things would of course conclude this to be the case, and would as soon picture my lady the Duchess of Mayfair dining on red herrings and potatoes at the absurd hour of one o’clock p.m., or blackleading her own grate with her own alabaster fingers, as weeping over the death of her child, or breaking her heart for her faithless husband, just like Mrs. Stiggins, potato and coal merchant on a small scale, or Mrs. Higgins, whose sole revenues come from “Mangling done here.” + 

And it does seem hard, oh my brethren, that there should be any limit to the magic power of gold! It may exclude bad airs, foul scents, ugly sights, and jarring sounds; it may surround its possessors with beauty, grace, art, luxury, and so-called pleasure; but it cannot shut out death or care; for to these stern visitors Mayfair and St. Giles’s must alike open their reluctant doors whenever the dreaded guests may be pleased to call. + 

You do not send cards for your morning concerts, or fêtes champêtres, or thés dansantes, to Sorrow or Sadness, oh noble duchesses and countesses; but have you never seen their face in the crowd when you least looked to meet them? + 

Through the foliage and rich blossoms in the conservatory, and through the white damask curtains of the long French window, the autumn sunshine comes with subdued light into a boudoir on the second floor of a large house in Park Lane. The velvet-pile carpets in this room and the bedchamber and dressing room adjoining, are made in imitation of a mossy ground on which autumn leaves have fallen; so exquisite, indeed, is the design, that it is difficult to think that the light breeze which enters at the open window cannot sweep away the fragile leaf, which seems to flutter in the sun. The walls are of the palest cream-colour, embellished with enamelled portraits of Louis the Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and the unfortunate boy prisoner of the Temple, let into the oval panels on the four sides of the room. Everything in this apartment, though perfect in form and colour, is subdued and simple; there are none of the Buhl and marqueterie cabinets, the artificial flowers, ormolu clocks, French prints, and musical boxes which might adorn the boudoir of an opera-dancer or the wife of a parvenu. The easy-chairs and luxurious sofas are made of a polished white wood, and are covered with white damask. On the marble mantelpiece there are two or three vases of the purest and most classical forms; and these, with Canova’s bust of Napoleon, are the only ornaments in the room. Near the fireplace, in which burns a small fire, there is a table loaded with books, French, English, and German, the newest publications of the day; but they are tossed in a great heap, as if they had one by one been looked at and cast aside unread. By this table there is a lady seated, whose beautiful face is rendered still more striking by the simplicity of her black dress. + 

This lady is Valerie de Lancy, now Countess de Marolles; for Monsieur Marolles has expended some part of his wife’s fortune upon certain estates in the south of France which give him the title of Count de Marolles. + 

A lucky man, this Raymond Marolles. A beautiful wife, a title, and an immense fortune are no such poor prizes in the lottery of life. But this Raymond is a man who likes to extend his possessions; and in South America he has established himself as a banker on a large scale, and he has lately come over to England with his wife and son, for the purpose of establishing a branch of this bank in London. Of course, a man with his aristocratic connections and enormous fortune is respected and trusted throughout the continent of South America. + 

Eight years have taken nothing from the beauty of Valerie de Marolles. The dark eyes have the same fire, the proud head the same haughty grace; but alone and in repose the face has a shadow of deep and settled sadness that is painful to look upon, for it is the gloomy sadness of despair. The world in which this woman lives, which knows her only as the brilliant, witty, vivacious, and sparkling Parisian, little dreams that she talks because she dare not think; that she is restless and vivacious because she dare not be still; that she hurries from place to place in pursuit of pleasure and excitement because only in excitement, and in a life which is as false and hollow as the mirth she assumes, can she fly from the phantom which pursues her. O shadow that will not be driven away! O pale and pensive ghost, that rises before us in every hour and in every scene, to mock the noisy and tumultuous revelry which, by the rule of opposites, we call Pleasure!⁠—which of us is free from your haunting presence, O phantom, whose name is The Past? + 

Valerie is not alone; a little boy, between seven and eight years of age, is standing at her knee, reading aloud to her from a book of fables. + 

“A frog beheld an ox⁠—” he began. But as he read the first words the door of the boudoir opened, and a gentleman entered, whose pale fair face, blue eyes, light eyelashes, and dark hair and eyebrows proclaimed him to be the husband of Valerie. + 

“Ah,” he said, glancing with a sneer at the boy, who lifted his dark eyes for a moment, and then dropped them on his book with an indifference that bespoke little love for the newcomer, “you are teaching your child, madame. Teaching him to read? Is not that an innovation? The boy has a fine voice, and the ear of a maestro. Let him learn the solfeggi, and very likely one of these days he will be as great a man as⁠—” + 

Valerie looks at him with the old contempt, the old icy coldness in her face. “Do you want anything of me this morning, monsieur?” she asked. + 

“No, madame. Having the entire command of your fortune, what can I ask? A smile? Nay, madame; you keep your smiles for your son; and again, they are so cheap in London, the smiles of beauty.” + 

“Then, monsieur, since you require nothing at my hands, may I ask why you insult me with your presence?” + 

“You teach your son to respect⁠—his father, madame,” said Raymond with a sneer, throwing himself into an easy-chair opposite Valerie. “You set the future Count de Marolles a good example. He will be a model of filial piety, as you are of⁠—” + 

“Do not fear, Monsieur de Marolles, but that one day I shall teach my son to respect his father; fear rather lest I teach him to avenge⁠—” + 

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

During the whole of this brief dialogue, the little boy has held his mother’s hand, looking with his serious eyes anxiously in her face. Young as he is, there is a courage in his glance and a look of firmness in his determined underlip that promises well for the future. Valerie turns from the cynical face of her husband, and lays a caressing hand on the boy’s dark ringlets. Do those ringlets remind her of any other dark hair? Do any other eyes look out in the light of those she gazes at now? + 

“You were good enough to ask me just now, madame, the purport of my visit; your discrimination naturally suggesting to you that there is nothing so remarkably attractive in the society to be found in these apartments, infantine lectures in words of one syllable included”⁠—he glances towards the boy as he speaks, and the cruel blue eyes are never so cruel as when they look that way⁠—“as to induce me to enter them without some purpose or other.” + 

“Perhaps monsieur will be so good as to be brief in stating that purpose? He may imagine, that being entirely devoted to my son, I do not choose to have his studies, or even his amusements, interrupted.” + 

“You bring up young Count Almaviva like a prince, madame. It is something to have good blood in one’s veins, even on one side⁠—” + 

If she could have killed him with a look of those bright dark eyes, he would have fallen dead as he spoke the words that struck one by one at her broken heart. He knew his power; he knew wherein it lay, and how to use it⁠—and he loved to wound her; because, though he had won wealth and rank from her, he had never conquered her, and he felt that even in her despair she defied him. + 

“You are irrelevant, monsieur. Pray be so kind as to say what brought you here, where I would not insult your good sense by saying you are a welcome visitor.” + 

“Briefly then, madame. Our domestic arrangements do not please me. We are never known to quarrel, it is true; but we are rarely seen to address each other, and we are not often seen in public together. Very well this in South America, where we were king and queen of our circle⁠—here it will not do. To say the least, it is mysterious. The fashionable world is scandalous. People draw inferences⁠—monsieur does not love madame, and he married her for her money; or, on the other hand, madame does not love monsieur, but married him because she had some powerful motive for so doing. This will not do, countess. A banker must be respectable, or people may be afraid to trust him. I must be, what I am now called, ‘the eminent banker;’ and I must be universally trusted.” + 

“That you may the better betray, monsieur; that is the motive for winning people’s confidence, in your code of moral economy, is it not?” + 

“Madame is becoming a logician; her argument by induction does her credit.” + 

“But, your business, monsieur?” + 

“Was to signify my wish, madame, that we should be seen oftener together in public. The Italian Opera, now, madame, though you have so great a distaste for it⁠—a distaste which, by the by, you did not possess during the early period of your life⁠—is a very popular resort. All the world will be there tonight, to witness the début of a singer of continental celebrity. Perhaps you will do me the honour to accompany me there?” + 

“I do not take any interest, monsieur⁠—” + 

“In the fortunes of tenor singers. Ah, how completely we outlive the foolish fancies of our youth! But you will occupy the box on the grand tier of her Majesty’s Theatre, which I have taken for the season. It is to your son’s⁠—to Cherubino’s interest, for you to comply with my request.” He glances towards the boy once more, with a sneer on his thin lips, and then turns and bows to Valerie, as he says⁠— + 

“Au revoir, madame. I shall order the carriage for eight o’clock.” + 

A horse, which at a sale at Tattersall’s had attracted the attention of all the votaries of the Corner, for the perfection of his points and the enormous price which he realized, caracoles before the door, under the skilful horsemanship of a well-trained and exquisitely-appointed groom. Another horse, equally high-bred, waits for his rider, the Count de Marolles. The groom dismounts, and holds the bridle, as the gentleman emerges from the door and springs into the saddle. A consummate horseman the Count de Marolles; a handsome man too, in spite of the restless and shifting blue eyes and the thin nervous lips. His dress is perfect, just keeping pace with the fashion sufficiently to denote high ton in the wearer, without outstripping it, so as to stamp him a parvenu. It has that elegant and studious grace which, to a casual observer, looks like carelessness, but which is in reality the perfection of the highest art of all⁠—the art of concealing art. + 

It is only twelve o’clock, and there are not many people of any standing in Piccadilly this September morning; but of the few gentlemen on horseback who pass Monsieur de Marolles, the most aristocratic-looking bow to him. He is well-known in the great world as the eminent banker, the owner of a superb house in Park Lane. He possesses a man cook of Parisian renown, who wears the cross of the Legion of Honour, given him by the first Napoleon on the occasion of a dinner at Talleyrand’s. He has estates in South America and in France; a fortune, said to be boundless, and a lovely wife. For the rest, if his own patent of nobility is of rather fresh date, and if, as impertinent people say, he never had a grandfather, or indeed anything in the way of a father to speak of, it must be remembered that great men, since the days of mythic history, have been celebrated for being born in rather an accidental manner. + 

But why a banker? Why, possessed of an enormous fortune, try to extend that fortune by speculation? That question lies between Raymond de Marolles and his conscience. Perhaps there are no bounds to the ambition of this man, who entered Paris eight years ago an obscure adventurer, and who, according to some accounts, is now a millionaire. + 

II + 

Mr. Peters Sees a Ghost + 

Mr. Peters, pensioned off by Richard’s mother with an income of a hundred pounds a year, has taken and furnished for himself a small house in a very small square not far from Mr. Darley’s establishment, and rejoicing in the high-sounding address of Wellington Square, Waterloo Road. Having done this, he feels that he has nothing more to do in life than to retire upon his laurels, and enjoy the otium cum dignitate which he has earned so well. + 

Of course Mr. Peters, as a single man, cannot by any possibility do for himself; and as⁠—having started an establishment of his own⁠—he is no longer in a position to be taken in and done for, the best thing he can do is to send for Kuppins; accordingly he does send for Kuppins. + 

Kuppins is to be cook, housekeeper, laundress, and parlourmaid all in one; and she is to have ten pounds per annum, and her tea, sugar, and beer⁠—wages only known in Slopperton in very high and aristocratic families where footmen are kept and no followers or Sundays out allowed. + 

So Kuppins comes to London, bringing the “fondling” with her; and arriving at the Euston Square station at eight o’clock in the evening, is launched into the dazzlingly bewildering gaiety of the New Road. + 

Well, it is not paved with gold certainly, this marvellous city; and it is, maybe, on the whole, just a little muddy. But oh, the shops⁠—what emporiums of splendour! What delightful excitement in being nearly run over every minute!⁠—to say nothing of that delicious chance of being knocked down by the crowd which is collected round a drunken woman expostulating with a policeman. Of course there must be a general election, or a great fire, or a man hanging, or a mad ox at large, or a murder just committed in the next street, or something wonderful going on, or there never could be such crowds of excited pedestrians, and such tearing and rushing, and smashing of cabs, carts, omnibuses, and parcel-delivery vans, all of them driven by charioteers in the last stage of insanity, and drawn by horses as wild as that time-honoured steed employed in the artistic and poetical punishment of our old friend Mazeppa. Tottenham Court Road! What a magnificent promenade! Occupied, of course, by the houses of the nobility! And is that magnificent establishment with the iron shutters Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London? Kuppins inclines to thinking it must be the Tower of London, because the iron shutters look so warlike, and are evidently intended as a means of defence in case of an attack from the French. + 

Kuppins is told by her escort, Mr. Peters, that this is the emporium of Messrs. Shoolbred, haberdashers and linendrapers. She thinks she must be dreaming, and wants to be pinched and awakened before she proceeds any further. It is rather a trying journey for Mr. Peters; for Kuppins wants to stop the cab every twenty yards or so, to get out and look at something in this wonderful Tottenham Court Road. + 

But the worst of Kuppins, perhaps, is, that she has almost an insane desire to see that Tottenham Court whence Tottenham Court Road derives its name; and when told that there is no such place, and never was⁠—leastways, never as Mr. Peters heard of⁠—she begins to think London, in spite of all its glories, rather a take-in. Then, again, Kuppins is very much disappointed at not passing either Westminster Abbey or the Bank of England, which she had made up her mind were both situated at Charing Cross; and it was a little trying for Mr. Peters to be asked whether every moderate-sized church they passed was St. Paul’s Cathedral, or every little bit of dead wall Newgate. To go over a bridge, and for it not to be London Bridge, but Waterloo Bridge, was in itself a mystery; but to be told that the Shot Tower on the Surrey side was not the Monument was too bewildering for endurance. As to the Victoria Theatre, which was illuminated to such a degree that the box-entrance seemed as a pathway to fairyland, Kuppins was so thoroughly assured in her own mind of its being Drury Lane and nothing else, unless, perhaps, the Houses of Parliament or Covent Garden⁠—that no protestations on Mr. Peters’s fingers could root out the fallacy. + 

But the journey came to an end at last; and Kuppins, safe with bag and baggage at No. 17, Wellington Square, partook of real London saveloys and real London porter with Mr. Peters and the “fondling,” in an elegant front parlour, furnished with a brilliantly polished but rather rickety Pembroke table, that was covered with a Royal Stuart plaid woollen cloth; half-a-dozen cane-seated chairs, so new and highly polished as to be apt to adhere to the garments of the person who so little understood their nature or properties as to attempt to sit upon them; a Kidderminster carpet, the pattern of which was of the size adapted to the requirements of a town hall, but which looked a little disproportionate to Mr. Peters’s apartment, two patterns and a quarter stretching the entire length of the room; and a mantelpiece ornamented with a looking-glass divided into three compartments by gilded Corinthian pillars, and further adorned with two black velvet kittens, one at each corner, and a parti-coloured velvet boy on a brown velvet donkey in the centre. + 

The next morning Mr. Peters announced his intention of taking the “fondling” into the city of London, for the purpose of showing him the outside of St. Paul’s, the Monument, Punch and Judy, and other intellectual exhibitions adapted to his tender years. Kuppins was for starting then and there on a visit to the pig-faced lady, than which magnificent creature she could not picture any greater wonder in the whole metropolis; but Kuppins had to stay at home in her post of housekeeper, and to inspect and arrange the domestic machinery of No. 17, Wellington Square. So the “fondling,” being magnificently arrayed in a clean collar and a pair of boots that were too small for him, took hold of his protector’s hand, and they sallied forth. + 

If anything, Punch and Judy bore off the palm in this young gentleman’s judgment of the miracles of the big village. + 

It was not so sublime a sight, perhaps, as the outside of St. Paul’s; but, on the other hand, it was a great deal cleaner; and the “fondling” would have liked to have seen Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece picked out with a little fresh paint before he was called upon to admire it. The Monument, no doubt, was very charming in the abstract; but unless he could have been perpetually on the top of it, and perpetually within a hair’s breadth of precipitating himself on to the pavement below, it wasn’t very much in his way. But Punch, with his delightfully original style of elocution, his overpoweringly comic domestic passages with Judy, and the dolefully funny dog with a frill round his neck and an evident dislike for his profession⁠—this, indeed, was an exhibition to be seen continually, and to be more admired the more continually seen, as no doubt the “fondling” would have said had he been familiar with Dr. Johnson, which, it is to be hoped, for his own peace of mind, he wasn’t. + 

It is rather a trying day for Mr. Peters, and he is not sorry when, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, he has taken the “fondling” all round the Bank of England⁠—(that young gentleman insisting on peering in at the great massive windows, in the fond hope of seeing the money)⁠—and has shown him the broad back of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, and the Clearing-house, and they are going out of Lombard Street, on their way to an omnibus which will take them home. But just as they are leaving the street the “fondling” makes a dead stop, and constrains Mr. Peters to do the same. + 

Standing before the glass doors of a handsome building, which a brass plate announces to be the “Anglo-Spanish-American Bank,” are two horses, and a groom in faultless buckskins and tops. He is evidently waiting for someone within the bank, and the “fondling” vehemently insists upon waiting too, to see the gentleman get on horseback. The good-natured detective consents; and they loiter about the pavement for some time before the glass doors are flung open by a white-neckclothed clerk, and a gentleman of rather foreign appearance emerges therefrom. + 

There is nothing particularly remarkable in this gentleman. The fit of his pale lavender gloves is certainly exquisite; the style of his dress is a recommendation to his tailor; but what there is in his appearance to occasion Mr. Peters’s holding on to a lamppost it is difficult to say. But Mr. Peters did certainly cling to the nearest lamppost, and did certainly turn as white as the whitest sheet of paper that ever came out of a stationer’s shop. The elegant-looking gentleman, who was no other than the Count de Marolles, had better occupation for his bright blue eyes than the observation of such small deer as Mr. Peters and the “fondling.” He mounted his horse, and rode slowly away, quite unconscious of the emotion his appearance had occasioned in the breast of the detective. No sooner had he done so, than Mr. Peters, relinquishing the lamppost and clutching the astonished “fondling,” darted after him. In a moment he was in the crowded thoroughfare before Guildhall. An empty cab passed close to them. He hailed it with frantic gesticulations, and sprang in, still holding the “fondling.” The Count de Marolles had to rein-in his horse for a moment from the press of cabs and omnibuses; and at Mr. Peters’s direction the “fondling” pointed him out to the cabman, with the emphatic injunction to “follow that gent, and not to lose sight of him nohow.” The charioteer gives a nod, cracks his whip, and drives slowly after the equestrian, who has some difficulty in making his way through Cheapside. The detective, whose complexion still wears a most striking affinity to writing-paper, looks out of the window, as if he thought the horseman they are following would melt into thin air, or go down a trap in St. Paul’s Churchyard. The “fondling” follows his protector’s eyes with his eyes, then looks back at Mr. Peters, and evidently does not know what to make of the business. At last his patron draws his head in at the window, and expresses himself upon his fingers thus⁠— + 

“How can it be him, when he’s dead?” + 

This is beyond the “fondling’s” comprehension, who evidently doesn’t understand the drift of the query, and as evidently doesn’t altogether like it, for he says⁠— + 

“Don’t! Come, I say, don’t, now.” + 

“How can it be him,” continues Mr. Peters, enlarging upon the question, “when I found him dead myself out upon that there heath, and took him back to the station, and afterwards see him buried, which would have been between four cross roads with a stake druv’ through him if he’d poisoned himself fifty years ago?” + 

This rather obscure speech is no more to the “fondling’s” liking than the last, for he cries out more energetically than before⁠— + 

“I say, now, I tell you I don’t like it, father. Don’t you try it on now, please. What does it mean? Who’s been dead fifty years ago, with a stake druv’ through ’em, and four cross roads on a heath? Who?” + 

Mr. Peters puts his head out of the window, and directing the attention of the “fondling” to the elegant equestrian they are following, says, emphatically, upon his fingers⁠— + 

“Him!” + 

“Dead, is he?” said the “fondling,” clinging very close to his adopted parent. “Dead! and very well he looks, considerin’; but,” he continued, in an awful and anxious whisper, “where’s the stake and the four cross roads as was druv’ through him? Does he wear that ’ere loose coat to hide ’em?” + 

Mr. Peters didn’t answer this inquiry, but seemed to be ruminating, and, if one may be allowed the expression, thought aloud upon his fingers, as it was his habit to do at times. + 

“There couldn’t be two men so much alike, surely. That one I found dead was the one I saw at the public talkin’ to the young woman; and if so, this is another one, for that one was dead as sure as eggs is eggs. When eggs ceases to be eggs, which,” continued Mr. Peters, discursively, “considerin’ they’re sellin’ at twenty for a shilling, French, and dangerous, if you’re not partial to young parboiled chickens, is not likely yet awhile, why, then, that one I found on the heath will come to life again.” + 

The “fondling” was too busy stretching his neck out of the window of the cab, in his eagerness to keep his eye upon the Count de Marolles, to pay any attention to Mr. Peters’s fingers. The outside of St. Paul’s, and the performance of Punch and Judy, were very well in their way, but they were mild dissipations indeed, compared to the delight of following a ghost which had had a stake driven through his phantasmal form and wore lavender kid gloves. + 

“There was one thing,” continued the musing detective, “which struck me as curious, when I found the body of that young gent. Where was the scar from the sovering as that young woman throwed at him? Why nowheres! Not a trace of it to be seen, which I looked for it particular; and yet that cut wasn’t one to leave a scar that would wear out in six months, nor yet in six years either. I’ve had my face scratched myself, though I’m a single man, and I know what that is to last, and the awkwardness one has to go through in saying one’s been playing with spiteful kittens, and suchlike. But what’s that to a cut half a inch deep from the sharp edge of a sovering? If I could but get to see his forehead. The cut was just over his eyebrow, and I could see the mark of it with his hat on.” + 

While Mr. Peters abandons himself to such reflections as these, the cab drives on and follows the Count de Marolles down Ludgate Hill, through Fleet Street and the Strand, Charing Cross and Pall Mall, St. James’s Street and Piccadilly, till it comes up with him at the corner of Park Lane. + 

“This,” says Mr. Peters, “is where the swells live. Very likely he hangs out here; he’s a-ridin’ as if he was goin’ to stop presently, so we’ll get out.” Whereupon the “fondling” interprets to the cabman Mr. Peters’s wish to that effect, and they alight from the vehicle. + 

The detective’s surmise is correct. The Count stops, gets off his horse, and throws the reins to the groom. It happens at this very moment that an open carriage, in which two ladies are seated, passes on its way to the Grosvenor Gate. One of the ladies bows to the South-American banker, and as he lifts his hat in returning her salute, Mr. Peters, who is looking at nothing particular, sees very distinctly the scar which is the sole memorial of that public-house encounter on the banks of the Sloshy. + 

As Raymond throws the reins to the groom he says, “I shall not ride again today, Curtis. Tell Morgan to have the Countess’s carriage at the door at eight for the opera.” + 

Mr. Peters, who doesn’t seem to be a person blest with the faculty of hearing, but who is, to all appearance, busily engaged in drawing the attention of the “fondling” to the architectural beauties of Grosvenor Gate, may nevertheless take due note of this remark. + 

The elegant banker ascends the steps of his house, at the hall-door of which stand gorgeous and obsequious flunkeys, whose liveries and legs alike fill with admiration the juvenile mind of the “fondling.” + 

Mr. Peters is very grave for some time, as they walk away; but at last, when they have got halfway down Piccadilly, he has recourse once more to his fingers, and addresses his young friend thus: + 

“What did you think of him, Slosh?” + 

“Which,” says the “fondling;” “the cove in the red velvet breeches as opened the door, or the swell ghost?” + 

“The swell.” + 

“Well, I think he’s uncommon handsome, and very easy in his manners, all things taken into consideration,” said that elderly juvenile with deliberation. + 

“Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?” + 

Slosh repeats that he does. + 

Mr. Peters’s gravity increases every moment. “Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?” he asks again, and again the boy answers. At last, to the considerable inconvenience of the passersby, the detective makes a dead stop, and says, “I’m glad you think him han’some, Slosh; and I’m glad you thinks him easy, which, all things considered, he is, uncommon. In fact, I’m glad he meets your views as far as personal appearance goes, because, between you and me, Slosh, that man’s your father.” + 

It is the boy’s turn to hold on to the lamppost now. To have a ghost for a father, and, as Slosh afterwards remarked, “a ghost as wears polishy boots, and lives in Park Lane, too,” was enough to take the breath out of any boy, however preternaturally elderly and superhumanly sharp his police-office experiences may have made him. On the whole, the “fondling” bears the shock very well, shakes off the effect of the information, and is ready for more in a minute. + 

“I wouldn’t have you mention it just now, you know, Slosh,” continues Mr. Peters, “because we don’t know what he may turn out, and whether he may quite answer our purpose in the parental line. There’s a little outstanding matter between me and him that I shall have to look him up for. I may want your help; and if I do, you’ll give it faithful, won’t you, Slosh?” + 

“Of course I will,” said that young gentleman. “Is there any reward out for him, father?” He always called Mr. Peters father, and wasn’t prepared to change his habit in deference to any ghostly phenomenon in the way of a parent suddenly turning up in Lombard Street. “Is there any reward out for him?” he asks, eagerly; “bankers is good for something in the levanting line, I know, nowadays.” + 

The detective looked at the boy’s sharp thin features with a scrutinising glance common to men of his profession. + 

“Then you’ll serve me faithful, if I want you, Slosh? I thought perhaps you might let family interests interfere with business, you know.” + 

“Not a bit of it,” said the youthful enthusiast. “I’d hang my grandmother for a sovering, and the pride of catching her, she was a downy one.” + 

“Chips of old blocks is of the same wood, and it’s only reasonable there should be a similarity in the grain,” mused Mr. Peters, as he and the “fondling” rode home in an omnibus. “I thought I’d make him a genius, but I didn’t know there was such a undercurrent of his father. It’ll make him the glory of his profession. Softheartedness has been the ruin of many a detective as has had the brains to work out a deep-laid game, but not the heart to carry it through.” + 

III + 

The Cherokees Mark Their Man + 

Her Majesty’s Theatre is peculiarly brilliant this evening. Diamonds and beauty, in tier above tier, look out from the amber-curtained boxes. The stalls are full, and the pit is crammed. In fop’s alley there is scarcely standing room; indeed, one gentleman remarks to another, that if Pandemonium is equally hot and crowded, he will turn Methodist parson in his old age, and give his mind to drinking at tea-meetings. + 

The gentleman who makes this remark is neither more nor less than a distinguished member of the “Cheerfuls,” the domino-player alluded to some chapters back. + 

He is standing talking to Richard; and to see him now, with an opera-glass in his hand, his hair worn in a manner conforming with the usages of society, and only in a modified degree suggesting that celebrated hero of the Newgate calendar and modern romance, Mr. John Sheppard, a dress-coat, patent leather boots, and the regulation white waistcoat, you would think he had never been tipsy or riotous in his life. + 

This gentleman is Mr. Percy Cordonner. All the Cherokees are more or less literary, and all the Cherokees have, more or less, admission to every place of entertainment, from Her Majesty’s Theatre to the meetings of the members of the “P.R.” But what brings Richard to the Opera tonight? and who is that not very musical-looking little gentleman at his elbow? + 

“Will they all be here?” asked Dick of Mr. Cordonner. + 

“Every one of them; unless Splitters is unable to tear himself away from his nightly feast of blood and blue fire at the Vic. His piece has been performed fourteen times, and it’s my belief he’s been at every representation; and that he tears his hair when the actors leave out the gems of the dialogue and drop their h’s. They do drop their h’s over the water,” he continues, lapsing into a reverie; “when our compositors are short of type, they go over and sweep them up.” + 

“You’re sure they’ll be here, then, Percy?” + 

“Every one of them, I tell you. I’m whipper-in. They’re to meet at the oyster shop in the Haymarket; you know the place, where there’s a pretty girl and fresh Colchesters, don’t charge you anything extra for the lemon, and you can squeeze her hand when she gives you the change. They’re sure to come in here two at a time, and put their mark upon the gentleman in question. Is he in the house yet, old fellow?” + 

Richard turns to the quiet little man at his elbow, who is our old friend Mr. Peters, and asks him a question: he only shakes his head in reply. + 

“No, he’s not here yet,” says Dick; “let’s have a look at the stage, and see what sort of stuff this Signor Mosquetti is made of.” + 

“I shall cut him up, on principle,” says Percy; “and the better he is, the more I shall cut him up, on another principle.” + 

There is a great deal of curiosity about this new tenor of continental celebrity. The opera is the Lucia, and the appearance of Edgardo is looked forward to with anxiety. Presently the hero of the square-cut coat and jackboots enters. He is a handsome fellow, with a dark southern face, and an easy insouciant manner. His voice is melody itself; the rich notes roll out in a flood of sweetness, without the faintest indication of effort. Though Richard pretends to look at the stage, though perhaps he does try to direct his attention that way, his pale face, his wandering glance, and his restless underlip, show him to be greatly agitated. He is waiting for that moment when the detective shall say to him, “There is the murderer of your uncle. There is the man for whose guilt you have suffered, and must suffer, till he is brought to justice.” The first act of the opera seemed endless to Daredevil Dick; while his philosophical friend, Mr. Cordonner, looked on as coolly as he would have done at an earthquake, or the end of the world, or any other trifling event of that nature. + 

The curtain has fallen upon the first act, when Mr. Peters lays his hand on Richard’s arm and points to a box on the grand tier. + 

A gentleman and lady, and a little boy, have just taken their seats. The gentleman, as becomes him, sits with his back to the stage and faces the house. He lifts his opera-glass to take a leisurely survey of the audience. Percy puts his glass into Richard’s hand, and with a hearty “Courage, old boy!” watches him as he looks for the first time at his deadliest enemy. + 

And is that calm, aristocratic, and serene face the face of a murderer? The shifting blue eyes and the thin arched lips are not discernible from this distance; but through the glass the general effect of the face is very plainly seen, and there is no fear that Richard will fail to know its owner again, whenever and wherever he may meet him. + 

Mr. Cordonner, after a deliberate inspection of the personal attractions of the Count de Marolles, remarks, with less respect than indifference. + 

“Well, the beggar is by no means bad-looking, but he looks a determined scoundrel. He’d make a first-rate light-comedy villain for a Porte-St.-Martin drama. I can imagine him in Hessian boots poisoning all his relations, and laughing at the police when they come to arrest him.” + 

“Shall you know him again, Percy?” asks Richard. + 

“Among an army of soldiers, every one of them dressed in the same uniform,” replies his friend. “There’s something unmistakable about that pale thin face. I’ll go and bring the other fellows in, that they may all be able to swear to him when they see him.” + 

In groups of two and three the Cherokees strolled into the pit, and were conducted by Mr. Cordonner⁠—who, to serve a friend, could, on a push, be almost active⁠—to the spot where Richard and the detective stood. One after another they took a long look, through the most powerful glass they could select, at the tranquil features of Victor de Marolles. + 

Little did that gentleman dream of this amateur band of police, formed for the special purpose of the detection of the crime he was supposed to have committed. + 

One by one the “Cheerfuls” register the Count’s handsome face upon their memories, and with a hearty shake of the hand each man declares his willingness to serve Richard whenever and wherever he may see a chance, however faint or distant, of so doing. + 

And all this time the Count is utterly unmoved. Not quite so unmoved though, when, in the second act, he recognizes in the Edgardo⁠—the new tenor, the hero of the night⁠—his old acquaintance of the Parisian Italian Opera, the chorus-singer and mimic, Monsieur Paul Moucée. This skilful workman does not care about meeting with a tool which, once used, were better thrown aside and forever done away with. But this Signor Paolo Mosquetti is neither more nor less than the slovenly, petit-verre-drinking, domino-playing chorus-singer, at a salary of thirty francs a week. His genius, which enabled him to sing an aria in perfect imitation of the fashionable tenor of the day, has also enabled him, with a little industry, and a little less wine-drinking and gambling, to become a fashionable tenor himself, and Milan, Naples, Vienna, and Paris testify to his triumphs. + 

And all this time Valerie de Marolles looks on a stage such as that on which, years ago, she so often saw the form she loved. That faint resemblance, that likeness in his walk, voice, and manner, which Moucée has to Gaston de Lancy strikes her very forcibly. It is no great likeness, except when the mimic is bent on representing the man he resembles; then, indeed, as we know, it is remarkable. But at any time it is enough to strike a bitter pang to this bereaved and remorseful heart, which in every dream and every shadow is only too apt to recall that unforgotten past. + 

The Cherokees meanwhile express their sentiments pretty freely about Monsieur Raymond de Marolles, and discuss divers schemes for the bringing of him to justice. Splitters, whose experiences as a dramatic writer suggested to him every possible kind of mode but a natural one, proposed that Richard should wait upon the Count, when convenient, at the hour of midnight, disguised as his uncle’s ghost, and confound the villain in the stronghold of his crime⁠—meaning Park Lane. This sentence was verbatim from a playbill, as well as the whole very available idea; Mr. Splitters’s notions of justice being entirely confined to the retributive or poetical, in the person of a gentleman with a very long speech and two pistols. + 

“The Smasher’s outside,” said Percy Cordonner. “He wants to have a look at our friend as he goes out, that he may reckon him up. You’d better let him go into the Count’s peepers with his left, Dick, and damage his beauty; it’s the best chance you’ll get.” + 

“No, no; I tell you, Percy, that man shall stand where I stood. That man shall drink to the dregs the cup I drank, when I stood in the criminal dock at Slopperton and saw every eye turned towards me with execration and horror, and knew that my innocence was of no avail to sustain me in the good opinion of one creature who had known me from my very boyhood.” + 

“Except the ‘Cheerfuls,’ ” said Percy. “Don’t forget the ‘Cheerfuls.’ ” + 

“When I do, I shall have forgotten all on this side of the grave, you may depend, Percy. No; I have some firm friends on earth, and here is one;” and he laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Peters, who still stood at his elbow. + 

The opera was concluded, and the Count de Marolles and his lovely wife rose to leave their box. Richard, Percy, Splitters, two or three more of the Cherokees, and Mr. Peters left the pit at the same time, and contrived to be at the box-entrance before Raymond’s party came out. + 

At last the Count de Marolles’ carriage was called; and as it drew up, Raymond descended the steps with his wife on his arm, her little boy clinging to her left hand. + 

“She’s a splendid creature,” said Percy; “but there’s a spice of devilry in those glorious dark eyes. I wouldn’t be her husband for a trifle, if I happened to offend her.” + 

As the Count and Countess crossed from the doors of the opera-house to their carriage, a drunken man came reeling past, and before the servants or policemen standing by could interfere, stumbled against Raymond de Marolles, and in so doing knocked his hat off. He picked it up immediately, and, muttering some unintelligible apology, returned it to Raymond, looking, as he did so, very steadily in the face of M. de Marolles. The occurrence did not occupy a moment, and the Count was too finished a gentleman to make any disturbance. This man was the Smasher. + 

As the carriage drove off, he joined the group under the colonnade, perfectly sober by this time. + 

“I’ve had a jolly good look at him, Mr. Marwood,” he said, “and I’d swear to him after forty rounds in the ring, which is apt sometimes to take a little of the Cupid out of a gent. He’s not a bad-looking cove on the whole, and looks game. He’s rather slight built, but he might make that up in science, and dance a pretty tidy quadrille round the chap he was put up agin, bein’ active and lissom. I see the cut upon his forehead, Mr. Peters, as you told me to take notice of,” he said, addressing the detective. “He didn’t get that in a fair stand-up fight. Leastways not from an Englishman. When you cross the water for your antagonist, you don’t know what you may get.” + 

“He got it from an Englishwoman, though,” said Richard. + 

“Did he, now? Ah, that’s the worst of the softer sect; you see, sir, you never know where they’ll have you. They’re awful deficient in science, to be sure; but, Lord bless you, they make it up with the will,” and the Left-handed one rubbed his nose. He had been married during his early career, and was in the habit of saying that ten rounds inside the ropes was a trifle compared with one round in your own back-parlour, when your missus had got your knowledge-box in chancery against the corner of the mantelpiece, and was marking a dozen different editions of the ten commandments on your complexion with her bunch of fives. + 

“Come, gentlemen,” said the hospitable Smasher, “what do you say to a Welsh rarebit and a bottle of bitter at my place? We’re as full as we can hold downstairs, for the Finsbury Fizzer’s trainer has come up from Newmarket; and his backers is hearin’ anecdotes of his doings for the last interesting week. They talk of dropping down the river on Tuesday for the great event between him and the Atlantic Alligator, and the excitement’s tremendous; our barmaid’s hands is blistered with working at the engines. So come round and see the game, gentlemen; and if you’ve any loose cash you’d like to put upon the Fizzer I can get you decent odds, considerin’ he’s the favourite.” + 

Richard shook his head. He would go home to his mother, he said; he wanted to talk to Peters about the day’s work. He shook hands heartily with his friends, and as they strolled off to the Smasher’s, walked with them as far as Charing Cross, and left them at the corner that led into quiet Spring Gardens. + 

In the clubroom of the Cherokees that night the members renewed the oath they had taken on the night of Richard’s arrival, and formally inaugurated themselves as “Daredevil Dick’s secret police.” + 

IV + 

The Captain, the Chemist, and the Lascar + 

In the drawing-room of a house in a small street leading out of Regent Street are assembled, the morning after this opera-house rencontre, three people. It is almost difficult to imagine three persons more dissimilar than those who compose this little group. On a sofa near the open window, at which the autumn breeze comes blowing in over boxes of dusty London flowers, reclines a gentleman, whose bronzed and bearded face, and the military style even of the loose morning undress which he wears, proclaim him to be a soldier. A very handsome face it is, this soldier’s, although darkened not a little by a tropical sun, and a good deal shrouded by the thick black moustache and beard which conceal the expression of the mouth, and detract from the individuality of the face. He is smoking a long cherry-stemmed pipe, the bowl of which rests on the floor. A short distance from the sofa on which he is lying, an Indian servant is seated on the carpet, who watches the bowl of the pipe, ready to replenish it the moment it fails, and every now and then glances upward to the grave face of the officer with a look of unmistakable affection in his soft black eyes. + 

The third occupant of the little drawing-room is a pale, thin, studious-looking man, who is seated at a cabinet in a corner away from the window, amongst papers and books, which are heaped in a chaotic pile on the floor about him. Strange books and papers these are. Mathematical charts, inscribed with figures such as perhaps neither Newton or Leplace ever dreamed of. Volumes in old worm-eaten bindings, and written in strange languages long since dead and forgotten upon this earth; but they all seem familiar to this pale student, whose blue spectacles bend over pages of crabbed Arabic as intently as the eyes of a boarding-school miss who devours the last volume of the last new novel. Now and then he scratches a few figures, or a sign in algebra, or a sentence in Arabic, on the paper before him, and then goes back to the book again, never looking up towards the smoker or his Hindu attendant. Presently the soldier, as he relinquishes his pipe to the Indian to be replenished breaks the silence. + 

“So the great people of London, as well as of Paris, are beginning to believe in you, Laurent?” he says. + 

The student lifts his head from his work, and turning the blue spectacles towards the smoker, says in his old unimpassioned manner⁠— + 

“How can they do otherwise, when I tell them the truth? These,” he points to the pile of books and papers at his side, “do not err: they only want to be interpreted rightly. I may have been sometimes mistaken⁠—I have never been deceived.” + 

“You draw nice distinctions, Blurosset.” + 

“Not at all. If I have made mistakes in the course of my career, it has been from my own ignorance, my own powerlessness to read these aright; not from any shortcoming in the things themselves. I tell you, they do not deceive.” + 

“But will you ever read them aright? Will you ever fathom to the very bottom this dark gulf of forgotten science?” + 

“Yes, I am on the right road. I only pray to live long enough to reach the end.” + 

“And then⁠—?” + 

“Then it will be within the compass of my own will to live forever.” + 

“Pshaw! The old story⁠—the old delusion. How strange that the wisest on this earth should have been fooled by it!” + 

“Make sure that it is a delusion, before you say they were fooled by it, Captain.” + 

“Well, my dear Blurosset, Heaven forbid that I should dispute with one so learned as you upon so obscure a subject. I am more at home holding a fort against the Indians than holding an argument against Albertus Magnus. You still, however, persist that this faithful Mujeebez here is in some manner or other linked with my destiny?” + 

“I do.” + 

“And yet it is very singular! What can connect two men whose experiences in every way are so dissimilar?” + 

“I tell you again that he will be instrumental in confounding your enemies.” + 

“You know who they are⁠—or rather, who he is. I have but one.” + 

“Not two, Captain?” + 

“Not two. No, Blurosset. There is but one on whom I would wreak a deep and deadly vengeance.” + 

“And for the other?” + 

“Pity and forgiveness. Do not speak of that. There are some things which even now I am not strong enough to hear spoken of. That is one of them.” + 

“The history of your faithful Mujeebez there is a singular one, is it not?” asks the student, rising from his books, and advancing to the window. + 

“A very singular one. His master, an Englishman, with whom he came from Calcutta, and to whom he was devotedly attached⁠—” + 

“I was indeed, sahib,” said the Indian, in very good English, but with a strong foreign accent. + 

“This master, a rich nabob, was murdered, in the house of his sister, by his own nephew.” + 

“Very horrible, and very unnatural! Was the nephew hung?” + 

“No. The jury brought in a verdict of insanity: he was sent to a madhouse, where no doubt he still remains confined. Mujeebez was not present at the trial; he had escaped by a miracle with his own life; for the murderer, coming into the little room in which he slept, and finding him stirring, gave him a blow on the head, which placed him for some time in a very precarious state.” + 

“And did you see the murderer’s face, Mujeebez?” asks Monsieur Blurosset. + 

“No, sahib. It was dark, I could see nothing. The blow stunned me: when I recovered my senses, I was in the hospital, where I lay for months. The shock had brought on what the doctors called a nervous fever. For a long time I was utterly incapable of work; when I left the hospital I had not a friend in the world; but the good lady, the sister of my poor murdered master, gave me money to return to India, where I was kitmutghar for some time to an English colonel, in whose household I learned the language, and whom I did not leave till I entered the service of the good Captain.” + 

The “good Captain” laid his hand affectionately on his follower’s white-turbaned head, something with the protecting gesture with which he might caress a favourite and faithful dog. + 

“After you had saved my life, Mujeebez,” he said. + 

“I would have died to save it, sahib,” answered the Hindu. “A kind word sinks deep in the heart of the Indian.” + 

“And there was no doubt of the guilt of this nephew?” asks Blurosset. + 

“I cannot say, sahib. I did not know the English language then; I could understand nothing told me, except my poor master’s nephew was not hung, but put in a madhouse.” + 

“Did you see him⁠—this nephew?” + 

“Yes, sahib, the night before the murder. He came into the room with my master when he retired to rest. I saw him only for a minute, for I left the room as they entered.” + 

“Should you know him again?” inquired the student. + 

“Anywhere, sahib. He was a handsome young man, with dark hazel eyes and a bright smile. He did not look like a murderer.” + 

“That is scarcely a sure rule to go by, is it, Laurent?” asks the Captain, with a bitter smile. + 

“I don’t know. A black heart will make strange lines in the handsomest face, which are translatable to the close observer.” + 

“Now,” says the officer, rising, and surrendering his pipe to the hands of his watchful attendant⁠—“now for my morning’s ride, and you will have the place to yourself for your scientific visitors, Laurent.” + 

“You will not go where you are likely to meet⁠—” + 

“Anyone I know? No, Blurosset. The lonelier the road the better I like it. I miss the deep jungle and the tiger-hunt, eh, Mujeebez?⁠—we miss them, do we not?” + 

The Hindu’s eyes brightened, as he answered eagerly, “Yes, indeed, sahib.” + 

Captain Lansdown (that is the name of the officer) is of French extraction; he speaks English perfectly, but still with a slightly foreign accent. He has distinguished himself by his marvellous courage and military genius in the Punjab, and is over in England on leave of absence. It is singular that so great a friendship should exist between this impetuous, danger-loving soldier, and the studious French chemist and pseudo-magician, Laurent Blurosset; but that a very firm friendship does exist between them is evident. They live in the same house; are both waited upon by Egerton Lansdown’s Indian servant, and are constantly together. + 

Laurent Blurosset, after becoming the fashion in Paris, is now the rage in London. But he rarely stirs beyond the threshold of his own door, though his presence is eagerly sought for in scientific coteries, where opinion is still, however, divided as to whether he is a charlatan or a great man. The materialists sneer⁠—the spiritualists believe. His disinterestedness, at any rate, speaks in favour of his truth. He will receive no money from any of his numerous visitors. He will serve them, he says, if he can, but he will not sell the wisdom of the mighty dead; for that is something too grand and solemn to be made a thing of barter. His discoveries in chemistry have made him sufficiently rich; and he can afford to devote himself to science, in the hope of finding truth for his reward. He asks no better recompense than the glory of the light he seeks. We leave him, then, to his eager and inquisitive visitors, while the Captain rides slowly through Oxford Street, on his way to the Edgware Road, through which he emerges into the country. + 

V + 

The New Milkman in Park Lane + 

The post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some consequence in the servants’ hall. The French chef, who has his private sitting-room, wherein he works elaborate and scientific culinary combinations, which, when he condescends to talk English, he designates “plates,” has of course very little communication with the household. Mrs. Moper is his prime minister; he gives his orders to her for execution, and throws himself back in his easy-chair to think out a dish, while his handmaiden collects for him the vulgar elements of his noble art. Mrs. Moper is a very good cook herself; and when she leaves the Count de Marolles she will go into a family where there is no foreigner kept, and will have forty pounds per annum and a still-room of her own. She is in the caterpillar stage now, Mrs. Sarah Moper, and is content to write herself down kitchenmaid ad interim. + 

The servants’-hall dinner and the housekeeper’s repast are both over; but the preparations for the dinner have not yet begun, and Mrs. Moper and Liza, the scullerymaid, snatch half an hour’s calm before the coming storm, and sit down to darn stockings⁠— + 

“Which,” Mrs. Moper says, “my toes is through and my heels is out, and never can I get the time to set a stitch. For time there isn’t any in this house for a under-servant, which under-servant I will be no more than one year longer; or say my name’s not Sarah Moper.” + 

Liza, who is mending a black stocking with white thread (and a very fanciful effect it has too), evidently has no wish to dispute such a proposition. + 

“Indeed, Mrs. Moper,” she said, “that’s the truest word as ever you’ve spoke. It’s well for them as takes their wages for wearin’ silk gowns, and oilin’ of their hair, and lookin’ out of winder to watch the carriages go in at Grosvenor Gate; which, don’t tell me as Life Guardsmen would look up imperdent, if they hadn’t been looked down to likewise.” Eliza gets rather obscure here. “This ’ouse, Mrs. M., for upper-servants may be ’eaven, but for unders it’s more like the place as is pronounced like a letter of the alphabet, and isn’t to be named by me.” + 

There is no knowing how far this rather revolutionary style of conversation might have gone, for at this moment there came that familiar sound of the clink of milk-pails on the pavement above, and the London cry of milk. + 

“It’s Bugden with the milk, Liza; there was a pint of cream wrong in the last bill, Mrs. Moper says. Ask him to come down and correctify it, will you, Liza?” + 

Liza ascends the area steps and parleys with the milkman; presently he comes jingling down, with his pails swinging against the railings; he is rather awkward with his pails, this milkman, and I’m afraid he must spill more milk than he sells, as the Park Lane pavements testify. + 

“It isn’t Bugden,” says Liza, explanatory, as she ushers him into the kitchen. “Bugden ’as ’urt his leg, a-milkin’ a cow wot kicks when the flies worrits, and ’as sent this young man, as is rather new to the business, but is anxious to do his best.” + 

The new milkman enters the kitchen as she concludes her speech, and releasing himself from the pails, expresses his readiness to settle any mistake in the weekly bill. + 

He is rather a good-looking fellow, this milkman, and he has a very curly head of flaxen hair, preposterously light eyebrows, and dark hazel eyes, which form rather a piquant contrast. I don’t suppose Mrs. Moper and Liza think him bad-looking, for they beg him to sit down, and the scullerymaid thrusts the black stocking, on which she was heretofore engaged, into a table-drawer, and gives her hair a rapid extemporary smoothing with the palms of her hands. Mr. Bugden’s man seems by no means disinclined for a little friendly chat: he tells them how new he is to the business; how he thinks he should scarcely have chosen cowkeeping for his way of life, if he’d known as much about it as he does now; how there’s many things in the milk business, such as horses’ brains, warm water and treacle, and suchlike, as goes against his conscience; how he’s quite new to London and London ways, having come up only lately from the country. + 

“Whereabouts in the country?” Mrs. Moper asks. + 

“Berkshire,” the young man replies. + 

“Lor’,” Mrs. Moper says, “never was anything so remarkable. Poor Moper come from Berkshire, and knowed every inch of the country, and so I think do I, pretty well. What part of Berkshire, Mr.⁠—Mr.⁠—?” + 

“Volpes,” suggested the young man. + 

“What part of Berkshire, Mr. Volpes?” + 

Mr. Volpes looks, strange to say, rather at a loss to answer this very natural and simple inquiry. He looks at Mrs. Moper, then at Liza, and lastly at the pails. The pails seem to assist his memory, for he says, very distinctly, “Burley Scuffers.” + 

It is Mrs. Moper’s turn to look puzzled now, and she exclaims “Burley⁠—” + 

“Scuffers,” replies the young man. “Burley Scuffers, market town, fourteen miles on this side of Reading. The ‘Chicories,’ Sir Yorrick Tristram’s place, is a mile and a half out of the town.” + 

There’s no disputing such an accurate and detailed description as this. Mrs. Moper says it’s odd, all the times she’s been to Reading⁠—“which I wish I had as many sovereigns,” she mutters in parenthesis⁠—never did she remember passing through “Burley Scuffers.” + 

“It’s a pretty little town, too,” says the milkman; “there’s a lime-tree avenue just out of the High Street, called Pork-butchers’ Walk, as is crowded with young people of a Sunday evening after church.” + 

Mrs. Moper is quite taken with this description; and says, the very next time she goes to Reading to see poor Moper’s old mother, she will make a point of going to Burley Scuffers during her stay. + 

Mr. Volpes says, he would if he were she, and that she couldn’t employ her leisure time better. + 

They talk a good deal about Berkshire; and then Mrs. Moper relates some very interesting facts relative to the late Mr. Moper, and her determination, “which upon his dying bed it was his comfort so to think,” never to marry again; at which the milkman looks grieved, and says the gentlemen will be very blind indeed to their own interests if they don’t make her change her mind some day; and somehow or other (I don’t suppose servants often do such things), they get to talking about their master and their mistress. The milkman seems quite interested in this subject, and, forgetting in how many houses the innocent liquid he dispenses may be required, he sits with his elbows on the kitchen-table, listening to Mrs. Moper’s remarks, and now and then, when she wanders from her subject, drawing her back to it with an adroit question. She didn’t know much about the Count, she said, for the servants was most all of ’em new; they only brought two people with them from South America, which was Monsieur St. Mirotaine, the chef, and the Countess’s French maid, Mademoiselle Finette. But she thought Monsieur de Marolles very ’aughty, and as proud as he was ’igh, and that madame was very unhappy, “though it’s hard to know with them furriners, Mr. Volpes, what is what,” she continues; “and madame’s gloomy ways may be French for happiness, for all I knows.” + 

“He’s an Englishman, the Count, isn’t he?” asks Mr. Volpes. + 

“A Englishman! Lor’ bless your heart, no. They’re both French; she’s of Spanish igstraction, I believe, and they lived since their marriage mostly in Spanish America. But they always speaks to each other in French, when they do speak; which them as waits upon them says isn’t often.” + 

“He’s very rich, I suppose,” says the milkman. + 

“Rich!” cries Mrs. Moper, “the money as that man has got they say is fabellous; and he’s a regular business man too, down at his bank every day, rides off to the City as punctual as the clock strikes ten. Lor’, by the by, Mr. Volpes,” says Mrs. Moper suddenly, “you don’t happen to know of a tempory tiger, do you?” + 

“A temporary tiger!” Mr. Volpes looks considerably puzzled. + 

“Why, you see, the Count’s tiger, as wasn’t higher than the kitchen table I do believe, broke his arm the other day. He was a-hangin’ on to the strap behind the cab, a-standin’ upon nothing, as them boys will, when the vehicle was knocked agen an omnibus, and his arm bein’ wrenched sudden out of the strap, snapped like a bit of sealing-wax; and they’ve took him to the hospital, and he’s to come back as soon as ever he’s well; for he’s a deal thought on, bein’ a’most the smallest tiger at the West-end. So, if you happen to know of a boy as would come temporary, we should be obliged by your sending him round.” + 

“Did he know of a boy as would come temporary?” Mr. Budgen’s young man appeared so much impressed by this question, that for a minute or two he was quite incapable of answering it. He leaned his elbows on the kitchen table, with his face buried in his hands and his fingers twisted in his flaxen hair, and when he looked up there was, strange to say, a warm flush over his pale complexion, and something like a triumphant sparkle in his dark brown eyes. + 

“Nothing could fall out better,” he said; “nothing, nothing!” + 

“What, the poor lad breaking his arm?” asked Mrs. Moper, in a tone of surprise. + 

“No, no, not that,” said Mr. Budgen’s young man, just a little confused; “what I mean is, that I know the very boy to suit you⁠—the very boy, the very boy of all others to undertake the business. Ah,” he continued in a lower voice, “and to go through with it, too, to the end.” + 

“Why, as to the business,” replied Mrs. Moper, “it ain’t overmuch, hangin’ on behind, and lookin’ knowin’, and givin’ other tigers as good as they bring, when waitin’ outside the Calting or the Anthinium; which tigers as is used to the highest names in the peerage familiar as their meat and drink, will go on contemptuous about our fambly, callin’ the bank ‘the shop,’ and a-askin’, till they got our lad’s blood up (which he had had his guinea lessons from the May Fair Mawler, and were better left alone), when the smash was a-comin’, or whether we meant to give out three-and-sixpence in the pound like a honest house, or do the shabby thing and clear ourselves by a compensation with our creditors of fourpence-farthing? Ah,” continued Mrs. Moper, gravely, “many’s the time that child have come home with his nose as big as the ’ead of a six-week old baby, and no eyes at all as anyone could discover, which he’d been that knocked about in a stand-up fight with a lad three times his weight and size.” + 

“Then I can send the boy, and you’ll get him the situation?” said Mr. Budgen’s young man, who did not seem particularly interested in the rather elaborate recital of the exploits of the invalid tiger. + 

“He can have a character, I suppose?” inquired the lady. + 

“Oh, ah, to be sure. Budgen will give him a character.” + 

“You will impress upon the youth,” said Mrs. Moper, with great dignity, “that he will not be able to make this his permanence ’ome. The pay is good, and the meals is reg’lar, but the situation is tempory.” + 

“All right,” said Mr. Budgen’s assistant; “he doesn’t want a situation for long. I’ll bring him round myself this evening⁠—good afternoon;” with which very brief farewell, the flaxen-haired, dark-eyed milkman strode out of the kitchen. + 

“Hum!” muttered the cook, “his manners has not the London polish: I meant to have ast him to tea.” + 

“Why, I’m blest,” exclaimed the scullerymaid suddenly, “if he haven’t been and gone and left his yoke and pails behind him! Well, of all the strange milkmen I ever come anigh, if he ain’t the strangest!” + 

She might have thought him stranger still, perhaps, this light-haired milkman, had she seen him hail a stray cab in Brook Street, spring into it, snatch off his flaxen locks, whose hyacinthine waves were in the convenient form known by that most disagreeable of words, a wig; snatch off also the holland blouse common to the purveyors of milk, and rolling the two into a bundle, stuff them into the pocket of his shooting-jacket, before throwing himself back into the corner of the vehicle, to enjoy a meditative cigar, as his charioteer drives his best pace in the direction of that transpontine temple of Esculapius, Mr. Darley’s surgery. Daredevil Dick has made the first move in that fearful game of chess which is to be played between him and the Count de Marolles. + 

VI + 

Signor Mosquetti Relates an Adventure + 

On the evening which follows the very afternoon during which Richard Marwood made his first and only essay in the milk-trade, the Count and Countess de Marolles attend a musical party⁠—I beg pardon, I should, gentle reader, as you know, have said a soirée musicale⁠—at the house of a lady of high rank in Belgrave Square. London was almost empty, and this was one of the last parties of the season; but it is a goodly and an impressive sight to see⁠—even when London is, according to every fashionable authority, a perfect Sahara⁠—how many splendid carriages will draw up to the awning my Lady erects over the pavement before her door, when she announces herself “at home;” how many gorgeously dressed and lovely women will descend therefrom, scenting the night air of Belgravia with the fragrance wafted from their waving tresses and point-d’Alençon-bordered handkerchiefs; lending a perfume to the autumn violets struggling out a fading existence in Dresden boxes on the drawing-room balconies; lending the light of their diamonds to the gas-lamps before the door, and the light of their eyes to help out the aforesaid diamonds; sweeping the autumn dust and evening dews with the borders of costly silks, and marvels of Lyons and Spitalfields, and altogether glorifying the ground over which they walk. + 

On this evening one range of windows, at least, in Belgrave Square is brilliantly illuminated. Lady Londersdon’s Musical Wednesday, the last of the season, has been inaugurated with éclat by a scena from Signora Scorici, of Her Majesty’s Theatre and the Nobility’s Concerts; and Mr. Argyle Fitz-Bertram, the great English basso-baritono, and the handsomest man in England, has just shaken the square with the buffo duet from the Cenerentola⁠—in which performance he, Argyle, has so entirely swamped that amiable tenor Signor Maretti, that the latter gentleman has serious thoughts of calling him out tomorrow morning; which idea he would carry into execution if Argyle Fitz-Bertram were not a crack shot, and a pet pupil of Mr. Angelo’s into the bargain. + 

But even the great Argyle finds himself⁠—with the exception of being up to his eyes in a slough of despond, in the way of platonic flirtation with a fat duchess of fifty⁠—comparatively nowhere. The star of the evening is the new tenor, Signor Mosquetti, who has condescended to attend Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday. Argyle, who is the best-natured fellow as well as the most generous, and whose great rich voice wells up from a heart as sound as his lungs, throws himself back into a low easy-chair⁠—it creaks a little under his weight, by the by⁠—and allows the duchess to flirt with him, while a buzz goes round the room; Mosquetti is going to sing. Argyle looks lazily out of his half-closed dark eyes, with that peculiar expression which seems to say⁠—“Sing your best, old fellow! My G in the bass clef would crush your half-octave or so of falsetto before you knew where you were, or your ‘Pretty Jane’ either. Sing away, my boy! we’ll have ‘Scots Wha Hae’ by-and-by. I’ve some friends down in Essex who want to hear it, and the wind’s in the right quarter for the voice to travel. They won’t hear you five doors off. Sing your best.” + 

Just as Signor Mosquetti is about to take his place at the piano, the Count and Countess de Marolles advance through the crowd about the doorway. + 

Valerie, beautiful, pale, calm as ever, is received with considerable empressement by her hostess. She is the heiress of one of the most ancient and aristocratic families in France, and is moreover the wife of one of the richest men in London, so is sure of a welcome throughout Belgravia. + 

“Mosquetti is going to sing,” murmurs Lady Londersdon; “you were charmed with him in the Lucia, of course? You have lost Fitz-Bertram’s duet. It was charming; all the chandeliers were shaken by his lower notes; charming, I assure you. He’ll sing again after Mosquetti: the Duchess of C. is éprise, as you see. I believe she is perpetually sending him diamond rings and studs; and the Duke, they do say, has refused to be responsible for her account at Storr’s.” + 

Valerie’s interest in Mr. Fitz-Bertram’s conduct is not very intense; she bends her haughty head, just slightly elevating her arched eyebrows with the faintest indication of well-bred surprise; but she is interested in Signor Mosquetti, and avails herself of the seat her hostess offers to her near Erard’s grand piano. The song concludes very soon after she is seated; but Mosquetti remains near the piano, talking to an elderly gentleman, who is evidently a connoisseur. + 

“I have never heard but one man, Signor Mosquetti,” says this gentleman, “whose voice resembled yours.” + 

There is nothing very particular in the words, but Valerie’s attention is apparently arrested by them, for she fixes her eyes intently on Signor Mosquetti, as though awaiting his reply. + 

“And he, my lord?” says Mosquetti, interrogatively. + 

“He, poor fellow, is dead.” Now indeed Valerie, pale with a pallor greater than usual, listens as though her whole soul hung on the words she heard. + 

“He is dead,” continued the gentleman. “He died young, in the zenith of his reputation. His name was⁠—let me see⁠—I heard him in Paris last; his name was⁠—” + 

“De Lancy, perhaps, my lord?” says Mosquetti. + 

“It was De Lancy; yes. He had some most peculiar and at the same time most beautiful tones in his voice, and you appear to me to have the very same.” + 

Mosquetti bowed at the compliment. “It is singular, my lord,” he said; “but I doubt if those tones are quite natural to me. I am a little of a mimic, and at one period of my life I was in the habit of imitating poor De Lancy, whose singing I very much admired.” + 

Valerie grasps the delicate fan in her nervous hand so tightly that the group of courtiers and fair ladies, of the time of Louis Quatorze, dancing nothing particular on a blue cloud, are crushed out of all symmetry as she listens to this conversation. + 

“I was, at the time I knew De Lancy, merely a chorus-singer at the Italian Opera, Paris.” + 

The listeners draw nearer, and form quite a circle round Mosquetti, who is the lion of the night; even Argyle Fitz-Bertram pricks up his ears, and deserts the Duchess in order to hear this conversation. + 

“A low chorus-singer,” he mutters to himself. “So help me, Jupiter, I knew he was a nobody.” + 

“This passion for mimicry,” said Mosquetti, “was so great that I acquired a sort of celebrity throughout the Opera House, and even beyond its walls. I could imitate De Lancy better, perhaps, than anyone else; for in height, figure, and general appearance I was said to resemble him.” + 

“You do,” said the gentleman; “you do very much resemble the poor fellow.” + 

“This resemblance one day gave rise to quite an adventure, which, if I shall not bore you⁠—” he glanced round. + 

There is a general murmur. “Bore us! No! Delighted, enraptured, charmed above all things!” Fitz-Bertram is quite energetic in this omnes business, and says, “No, no!”⁠—muttering to himself afterwards, “So help me, Jupiter, I knew the fellow was a nuisance!” + 

“But the adventure! Pray let us hear it!” cried eager voices. + 

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I was a careless reckless fellow; quite content to put on a pair of russet boots which half swallowed me, and a green cotton-velvet tunic short in the sleeves and tight across the chest, and to go on the stage and sing in a chorus with fifty others, as idle as myself, in other russet boots and cotton-velvet tunics, which, as you know, is the court costume of a chorus-singer from the time of Charlemagne to the reign of Louis XV. I was quite happy, I say, to lounge on to the stage, unknown, unnoticed, badly paid and worse dressed, provided when the chorus was finished I had my cigarette, dominoes, and my glass of cognac in a third-rate café. I was playing one morning at those eternal dominoes⁠—(and never, I think,” said Mosquetti, parenthetically, “had a poor fellow so many double-sixes in his hand)⁠—when I was told a gentleman wanted to see me. This seemed too good a joke⁠—a gentleman for me! It couldn’t be a limb of the law, as I didn’t owe a farthing⁠—no Parisian tradesman being quite so demented as to give me credit. It was a gentleman⁠—a very aristocratic-looking fellow; handsome⁠—but I didn’t like his face; affable⁠—and yet I didn’t like his manner.” + 

Ah, Valerie! you may well listen now! + 

“He wanted me, he said,” continued Mosquetti, “to decide a little wager. Some foolish girl, who had seen De Lancy on the stage, and who believed him the ideal hero of romance, and was only in too much danger of throwing her heart and fortune at his feet, was to be disenchanted by any stratagem that could be devised. Her parents had entrusted the management of the affair to him, a relation of the lady’s. Would I assist him? Would I represent De Lancy, and play a little scene in the Bois de Boulogne, to open the eyes of this silly boarding-school miss⁠—would I, for a consideration? It was only to act a little stage play off the stage, and was for a good cause. I consented; and that evening, at half-past ten o’clock, under the shadow of the winter night and the leafless trees, I⁠—” + 

“Stop, stop! Signor Mosquetti!” cry the bystanders. “Madame! Madame de Marolles! Water! Smelling-salts! Your flacon, Lady Emily: she has fainted!” + 

No; she has not fainted; this is something worse than fainting, this convulsive agony, in which the proud form writhes, while the white and livid lips murmur strange and dreadful words. + 

“Murdered, murdered and innocent! while I, vile dupe, pitiful fool, was only a puppet in the hands of a demon!” + 

At this very moment Monsieur de Marolles, who has been summoned from the adjoining apartment, where he has been discussing a financial measure with some members of the lower House, enters hurriedly. + 

“Valerie, Valerie, what is the matter?” he says, approaching his wife. + 

She rises⁠—rises with a terrible effort, and looks him full in the face. + 

“I thought, monsieur, that I knew the hideous abyss of your black soul to its lowest depths. I was wrong; I never knew you till tonight.” + 

Imagine such strong language as this in a Belgravian drawing-room, and then you can imagine the astonishment of the bystanders. + 

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Signor Mosquetti hurriedly. + 

“What?” cried they eagerly. + 

“That is the very man I have been speaking of.” + 

“That? The Count de Marolles?” + 

“The man bending over the lady who has fainted.” + 

Petrified Belgravians experience a new sensation⁠—surprise⁠—and rather like it. + 

Argyle Fitz-Bertram twists his black moustachios reflectively, and mutters⁠— + 

“So help me, Jupiter. I knew there’d be a row! I shan’t have to sing ‘Scots Wha Hae,’ and shall be just in time for that little supper at the Café de l’Europe.” + 

VII + 

The Golden Secret Is Told, and the Golden Bowl Is Broken + 

The new tiger, or, as he is called in the kitchen, the “tempory tiger,” takes his place, on the morning after Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday, behind the Count de Marolles’ cab, as that gentleman drives into the City. + 

There is little augury to be drawn from the pale smooth face of Raymond de Marolles, though Signor Mosquetti’s revelation has made his position rather a critical one. Till now he has ruled Valerie with a high hand; and though never conquering the indomitable spirit of the proud Spanish woman, he has at least forced that spirit to do the will of his. But now, now that she knows the trick put upon her⁠—now that she knows that the man she so deeply adored did not betray her, but died the victim of another’s treachery⁠—that the blood in which she has steeped her soul was the blood of the innocent⁠—what if now, in her desperation and despair, she dares all, and reveals all; what then? + 

“Why, then,” says Raymond de Marolles, cutting his horse over the ears with a delicate touch of the whip, which stings home, though, for all its delicacy; “why then, never shall it be said that Raymond Marolles found himself in a dilemma, without finding within himself the power to extricate himself. We are not conquered yet, and we have seen a good deal of life in thirty years⁠—and not a little danger. Play your best card, Valerie; I’ve a trump in my own hand to play when the time comes. Till then, keep dark. I tell you, my good woman, I have hothouses of my own, and don’t want your Covent Garden exotics at twopence a bunch!” + 

This last sentence is addressed to a woman, who pleads earnestly for the purchase of a wretched bunch of violets, which she holds up to tempt the man of fashion as she runs by the wheels of his cab, driving very slowly through the Strand. + 

“Fresh violets, sir. Do, sir, please. Only twopence, just twopence, sir, for the love of charity. I’ve a poor old woman at home, not related to me, sir, but I keep her. She’s dying-starving, sir, and dying of old age.” + 

“Bah! I tell you, my good woman, I’m not Lawrence Sterne on a sentimental journey, but a practical man of business. I don’t give macaroons to donkeys, or save mythic old women from starvation. You’d better keep out of the way of the wheels⁠—they’ll be over your feet presently, and if you suffer from corns they may probably hurt you,” says the philanthropic banker, in his politest tones. + 

“Stop, stop!” suddenly exclaims the woman, with an energy that almost startles even Raymond. “It’s you, is it⁠—Jim? No, not Jim; he’s dead and gone, I know; but you, you, the fine gentleman, the other brother. Stop, stop, I tell you, if you want to know a secret that’s in the keeping of one who may die while I am talking here! Stop, if you want to know who you are and what you are! Stop!” + 

Raymond does pull up at this last sentence. + 

“My good woman, do not be so energetic. Every eye in the Strand is on us; we shall have a crowd presently. Stay, wait for me in Essex Street; I’ll get out at the corner; that’s a quiet street, and we shall not be observed. Anything you have to tell me you can tell me there.” + 

The woman obeys him, and draws back to the pavement, where she keeps pace with the cab. + 

“A pretty time this for discoveries!” mutters the Count. “Who I am, and what I am! It’s the secret, I suppose, that the twaddling old maniac in Blind Peter made such a row about. Who I am, and what I am! Oh, I dare say I shall turn out to be somebody great, as the hero does in a lady’s novel. It’s a pity I haven’t the mark of a coronet behind my ear, or a bloody hand on my wrist. Who I am, and what I am! The son of a journeyman tailor perhaps, or a chemist’s apprentice, whose aristocratic connections prevented his acknowledging my mother.” + 

He is at the corner of Essex Street by this time, and springs out of the cab, throwing the reins to the temporary tiger, whose sharp face we need scarcely inform the reader discloses the features of the boy Slosh. + 

The woman is waiting for him; and after a few moments’ earnest conversation, Raymond emerges from the street, and orders the boy to drive the cab home immediately: he is not going to the City, but is going on particular business elsewhere. + 

Whether the “temporary tiger” proves himself worthy of the responsible situation he holds, and does drive the cab home, I cannot say; but I only know that a very small boy, in a ragged coat a great deal too large for him, and a battered hat so slouched over his eyes as quite to conceal his face from the casual observer, creeps cautiously, now a few paces behind, now a hundred yards on the other side of the way, now disappearing in the shadow of a doorway, now reappearing at the corner of the street, but never losing sight of the Count de Marolles and the purveyor of violets, as they bend their steps in the direction of Seven Dials. + 

Heaven forbid that we should follow them through all the turnings and twistings of that odoriferous neighbourhood, where foul scents, foul sights, and fouler language abound; whence May Fair and Belgravia shrink shuddering, as from an ill it is well for them to let alone, and a wrong that he may mend who will: not they who have been born for better things than to set disjointed times aright, or play the revolutionist to the dethronement of the legitimate monarchy of Queen Starvation and King Fever, to say nothing of the princes of the blood⁠—Dirt, Drunkenness, Theft, and Murder. When John Jones, tired of the monotonous pastime of beating his wife’s skull with a poker, comes to Lambeth and murders an Archbishop of Canterbury for the sake of the spoons, it will be time, in the eyes of Belgravia, to reform John Jones. In the meanwhile we of the upper ten thousand have Tattersall’s and Her Majesty’s Theatre, and John Jones (who, low republican, says he must have his amusements too) has such little diversions as wife-murder and cholera to break the monotony of his existence. + 

The Count and the violet-seller at last come to a pause. They had walked very quickly through the pestiferous streets, Raymond holding his aristocratic breath and shutting his patrician ears to the scents and the sounds around him. They come to a stand at last, in a dark court, before a tall lopsided house, with irresolute chimneypots, which looked as if the only thing that kept them erect was the want of unanimity as to which way they should fall. + 

Raymond, when invited by the woman to enter, looks suspiciously at the dingy staircase, as if wondering whether it would last his time, but at the request of his companion ascends it. + 

The boy in the large coat and slouched hat is playing marbles with another boy on the second-floor landing, and has evidently lived there all his life, and yet I’m puzzled as to who drove that cab home to the stables at the back of Park Lane. I fear it was not the “temporary tiger.” + 

The Count de Marolles and his guide pass the youthful gamester, who has just lost his second halfpenny, and ascend to the very top of the rickety house, the garrets of which are afflicted with intermittent ague whenever there is a high wind. + 

Into one of these garrets the woman conducts Raymond, and on a bed⁠—or its apology, a thing of shreds and patches, straw and dirt, which goes by the name of a bed at this end of the town⁠—lies the old woman we last saw in Blind Peter. + 

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 today 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. + 

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 bandana 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 meantime 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 anyone 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 villainous 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 versa. 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 someone 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, latchkey-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. Everyone 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 absentminded,” 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 storybooks that’s lent out at three halfpence 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. + 

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 passkey 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 latchkey⁠—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 lifeblood 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. + 