Martin Chuzzlewit
sister, as he knew so little of the place in which he had left her, and
good-humouredly proposed to ride back with him in a cab, in which he
might convey his box. Tom’s proposition that he should sup with them
that night, he flatly rejected, but made an appointment with him for the
morrow. ‘And now Tom,’ he said, as they rode along, ‘I have a question
to ask you to which I expect a manly and straightforward answer. Do you
want any money? I am pretty sure you do.’
‘I don’t indeed,’ said Tom.
‘I believe you are deceiving me.’
‘No. With many thanks to you, I am quite in earnest,’ Tom replied. ‘My
sister has some money, and so have I. If I had nothing else, John, I
have a five-pound note, which that good creature, Mrs Lupin, of the
Dragon, handed up to me outside the coach, in a letter begging me to
borrow it; and then drove off as hard as she could go.’
‘And a blessing on every dimple in her handsome face, say I!’ cried
John, ‘though why you should give her the preference over me, I don’t
know. Never mind. I bide my time, Tom.’
‘And I hope you’ll continue to bide it,’ returned Tom, gayly. ‘For I
owe you more, already, in a hundred other ways, than I can ever hope to
pay.’
They parted at the door of Tom’s new residence. John Westlock, sitting
in the cab, and, catching a glimpse of a blooming little busy creature
darting out to kiss Tom and to help him with his box, would not have had
the least objection to change places with him.
Well! she WAS a cheerful little thing; and had a quaint, bright
quietness about her that was infinitely pleasant. Surely she was the
best sauce for chops ever invented. The potatoes seemed to take a
pleasure in sending up their grateful steam before her; the froth upon
the pint of porter pouted to attract her notice. But it was all in vain.
She saw nothing but Tom. Tom was the first and last thing in the world.
As she sat opposite to Tom at supper, fingering one of Tom’s pet tunes
upon the table-cloth, and smiling in his face, he had never been so
happy in his life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SECRET SERVICE
In walking from the city with his sentimental friend, Tom Pinch had
looked into the face, and brushed against the threadbare sleeve, of Mr
Nadgett, man of mystery to the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and
Life Assurance Company. Mr Nadgett naturally passed away from Tom’s
remembrance as he passed out of his view; for he didn’t know him, and
had never heard his name.
As there are a vast number of people in the huge metropolis of England
who rise up every morning not knowing where their heads will rest at
night, so there are a multitude who shooting arrows over houses as their
daily business, never know on whom they fall. Mr Nadgett might have
passed Tom Pinch ten thousand times; might even have been quite familiar
with his face, his name, pursuits, and character; yet never once have
dreamed that Tom had any interest in any act or mystery of his. Tom
might have done the like by him of course. But the same private man out
of all the men alive, was in the mind of each at the same moment; was
prominently connected though in a different manner, with the day’s
adventures of both; and formed, when they passed each other in the
street, the one absorbing topic of their thoughts.
Why Tom had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his mind requires no explanation. Why Mr
Nadgett should have had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his, is quite another thing.
But, somehow or other, that amiable and worthy orphan had become a part
of the mystery of Mr Nadgett’s existence. Mr Nadgett took an interest
in his lightest proceedings; and it never flagged or wavered. He watched
him in and out of the Assurance Office, where he was now formally
installed as a Director; he dogged his footsteps in the streets; he
stood listening when he talked; he sat in coffee-rooms entering his
name in the great pocket-book, over and over again; he wrote letters to
himself about him constantly; and, when he found them in his pocket, put
them in the fire, with such distrust and caution that he would bend down
to watch the crumpled tinder while it floated upwards, as if his mind
misgave him, that the mystery it had contained might come out at the
chimney-pot.
And yet all this was quite a secret. Mr Nadgett kept it to himself, and
kept it close. Jonas had no more idea that Mr Nadgett’s eyes were fixed
on him, than he had that he was living under the daily inspection and
report of a whole order of Jesuits. Indeed Mr Nadgett’s eyes were seldom
fixed on any other objects than the ground, the clock, or the fire; but
every button on his coat might have been an eye, he saw so much.
The secret manner of the man disarmed suspicion in this wise;
suggesting, not that he was watching any one, but that he thought
some other man was watching him. He went about so stealthily, and kept
himself so wrapped up in himself, that the whole object of his life
appeared to be, to avoid notice and preserve his own mystery. Jonas
sometimes saw him in the street, hovering in the outer office, waiting
at the door for the man who never came, or slinking off with his
immovable face and drooping head, and the one beaver glove dangling
before him; but he would as soon have thought of the cross upon the top
of St. Paul’s Cathedral taking note of what he did, or slowly winding
a great net about his feet, as of Nadgett’s being engaged in such an
occupation.
Mr Nadgett made a mysterious change about this time in his mysterious
life: for whereas he had, until now, been first seen every morning
coming down Cornhill, so exactly like the Nadgett of the day before
as to occasion a popular belief that he never went to bed or took his
clothes off, he was now first seen in Holborn, coming out of Kingsgate
Street; and it was soon discovered that he actually went every morning
to a barber’s shop in that street to get shaved; and that the barber’s
name was Sweedlepipe. He seemed to make appointments with the man who
never came, to meet him at this barber’s; for he would frequently take
long spells of waiting in the shop, and would ask for pen and ink, and
pull out his pocket-book, and be very busy over it for an hour at a
time. Mrs Gamp and Mr Sweedlepipe had many deep discoursings on the
subject of this mysterious customer; but they usually agreed that he had
speculated too much and was keeping out of the way.
He must have appointed the man who never kept his word, to meet him at
another new place too; for one day he was found, for the first time,
by the waiter at the Mourning Coach-Horse, the House-of-call for
Undertakers, down in the City there, making figures with a pipe-stem in
the sawdust of a clean spittoon; and declining to call for anything, on
the ground of expecting a gentleman presently. As the gentleman was not
honourable enough to keep his engagement, he came again next day, with
his pocket-book in such a state of distention that he was regarded in
the bar as a man of large property. After that, he repeated his visits
every day, and had so much writing to do, that he made nothing of
emptying a capacious leaden inkstand in two sittings. Although he never
talked much, still, by being there among the regular customers, he made
their acquaintance, and in course of time became quite intimate with Mr
Tacker, Mr Mould’s foreman; and even with Mr Mould himself, who openly
said he was a long-headed man, a dry one, a salt fish, a deep file, a
rasper; and made him the subject of many other flattering encomiums.
At the same time, too, he told the people at the Assurance Office, in
his own mysterious way, that there was something wrong (secretly wrong,
of course) in his liver, and that he feared he must put himself
under the doctor’s hands. He was delivered over to Jobling upon this
representation; and though Jobling could not find out where his liver
was wrong, wrong Mr Nadgett said it was; observing that it was his
own liver, and he hoped he ought to know. Accordingly, he became Mr
Jobling’s patient; and detailing his symptoms in his slow and secret
way, was in and out of that gentleman’s room a dozen times a day.
As he pursued all these occupations at once; and all steadily; and all
secretly; and never slackened in his watchfulness of everything that
Mr Jonas said and did, and left unsaid and undone; it is not improbable
that they were, secretly, essential parts of some great scheme which Mr
Nadgett had on foot.
It was on the morning of this very day on which so much had happened to
Tom Pinch, that Nadgett suddenly appeared before Mr Montague’s house in
Pall Mall--he always made his appearance as if he had that moment come
up a trap--when the clocks were striking nine. He rang the bell in a
covert under-handed way, as though it were a treasonable act; and passed
in at the door, the moment it was opened wide enough to receive his
body. That done, he shut it immediately with his own hands.
Mr Bailey, taking up his name without delay, returned with a request
that he would follow him into his master’s chamber. The chairman of the
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Board was dressing,
and received him as a business person who was often backwards and
forwards, and was received at all times for his business’ sake.
‘Well, Mr Nadgett?’
Mr Nadgett put his hat upon the ground and coughed. The boy having
withdrawn and shut the door, he went to it softly, examined the handle,
and returned to within a pace or two of the chair in which Mr Montague
sat.
‘Any news, Mr Nadgett?’
‘I think we have some news at last, sir.’
‘I am happy to hear it. I began to fear you were off the scent, Mr
Nadgett.’
‘No, sir. It grows cold occasionally. It will sometimes. We can’t help
that.’
‘You are truth itself, Mr Nadgett. Do you report a great success?’
‘That depends upon your judgment and construction of it,’ was his
answer, as he put on his spectacles.
‘What do you think of it yourself? Have you pleased yourself?’
Mr Nadgett rubbed his hands slowly, stroked his chin, looked round the
room, and said, ‘Yes, yes, I think it’s a good case. I am disposed to
think it’s a good case. Will you go into it at once?’
‘By all means.’
Mr Nadgett picked out a certain chair from among the rest, and having
planted it in a particular spot, as carefully as if he had been going to
vault over it, placed another chair in front of it; leaving room for his
own legs between them. He then sat down in chair number two, and laid
his pocket-book, very carefully, on chair number one. He then untied the
pocket-book, and hung the string over the back of chair number one. He
then drew both the chairs a little nearer Mr Montague, and opening
the pocket-book spread out its contents. Finally he selected a certain
memorandum from the rest, and held it out to his employer, who, during
the whole of these preliminary ceremonies, had been making violent
efforts to conceal his impatience.
‘I wish you wouldn’t be so fond of making notes, my excellent friend,’
said Tigg Montague with a ghastly smile. ‘I wish you would consent to
give me their purport by word of mouth.’
‘I don’t like word of mouth,’ said Mr Nadgett gravely. ‘We never know
who’s listening.’
Mr Montague was going to retort, when Nadgett handed him the paper, and
said, with quiet exultation in his tone, ‘We’ll begin at the beginning,
and take that one first, if you please, sir.’
The chairman cast his eyes upon it, coldly, and with a smile which did
not render any great homage to the slow and methodical habits of his
spy. But he had not read half-a-dozen lines when the expression of his
face began to change, and before he had finished the perusal of the
paper, it was full of grave and serious attention.
‘Number Two,’ said Mr Nadgett, handing him another, and receiving back