Our Mutual Friend
more delicate mind! I charge you, then, with being some way concerned
in the Harmon Murder. I don’t say whether before, or in, or after, the
fact. I don’t say whether with having some knowledge of it that hasn’t
come out.’
‘You don’t surprise me. I foresaw your visit this afternoon.’
‘Don’t!’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Why, why argue? It’s my duty to inform you
that whatever you say, will be used against you.’
‘I don’t think it will.’
‘But I tell you it will,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘Now, having received the
caution, do you still say that you foresaw my visit this afternoon?’
‘Yes. And I will say something more, if you will step with me into the
next room.’
With a reassuring kiss on the lips of the frightened Bella, her husband
(to whom Mr Inspector obligingly offered his arm), took up a candle, and
withdrew with that gentleman. They were a full half-hour in conference.
When they returned, Mr Inspector looked considerably astonished.
‘I have invited this worthy officer, my dear,’ said John, ‘to make a
short excursion with me in which you shall be a sharer. He will take
something to eat and drink, I dare say, on your invitation, while you
are getting your bonnet on.’
Mr Inspector declined eating, but assented to the proposal of a glass of
brandy and water. Mixing this cold, and pensively consuming it, he broke
at intervals into such soliloquies as that he never did know such a
move, that he never had been so gravelled, and that what a game was
this to try the sort of stuff a man’s opinion of himself was made
of! Concurrently with these comments, he more than once burst out a
laughing, with the half-enjoying and half-piqued air of a man, who
had given up a good conundrum, after much guessing, and been told the
answer. Bella was so timid of him, that she noted these things in a
half-shrinking, half-perceptive way, and similarly noted that there was
a great change in his manner towards John. That coming-along-with-him
deportment was now lost in long musing looks at John and at herself and
sometimes in slow heavy rubs of his hand across his forehead, as if he
were ironing out the creases which his deep pondering made there. He had
had some coughing and whistling satellites secretly gravitating towards
him about the premises, but they were now dismissed, and he eyed John as
if he had meant to do him a public service, but had unfortunately been
anticipated. Whether Bella might have noted anything more, if she
had been less afraid of him, she could not determine; but it was all
inexplicable to her, and not the faintest flash of the real state of the
case broke in upon her mind. Mr Inspector’s increased notice of herself
and knowing way of raising his eyebrows when their eyes by any chance
met, as if he put the question ‘Don’t you see?’ augmented her timidity,
and, consequently, her perplexity. For all these reasons, when he
and she and John, at towards nine o’clock of a winter evening went to
London, and began driving from London Bridge, among low-lying water-side
wharves and docks and strange places, Bella was in the state of a
dreamer; perfectly unable to account for her being there, perfectly
unable to forecast what would happen next, or whither she was going, or
why; certain of nothing in the immediate present, but that she confided
in John, and that John seemed somehow to be getting more triumphant. But
what a certainty was that!
They alighted at last at the corner of a court, where there was a
building with a bright lamp and wicket gate. Its orderly appearance was
very unlike that of the surrounding neighbourhood, and was explained by
the inscription POLICE STATION.
‘We are not going in here, John?’ said Bella, clinging to him.
‘Yes, my dear; but of our own accord. We shall come out again as easily,
never fear.’
The whitewashed room was pure white as of old, the methodical
book-keeping was in peaceful progress as of old, and some distant howler
was banging against a cell door as of old. The sanctuary was not a
permanent abiding-place, but a kind of criminal Pickford’s. The lower
passions and vices were regularly ticked off in the books, warehoused in
the cells, carted away as per accompanying invoice, and left little mark
upon it.
Mr Inspector placed two chairs for his visitors, before the fire, and
communed in a low voice with a brother of his order (also of a half-pay,
and Royal Arms aspect), who, judged only by his occupation at the
moment, might have been a writing-master, setting copies. Their
conference done, Mr Inspector returned to the fireplace, and, having
observed that he would step round to the Fellowships and see how matters
stood, went out. He soon came back again, saying, ‘Nothing could be
better, for they’re at supper with Miss Abbey in the bar;’ and then they
all three went out together.
Still, as in a dream, Bella found herself entering a snug old-fashioned
public-house, and found herself smuggled into a little three-cornered
room nearly opposite the bar of that establishment. Mr Inspector
achieved the smuggling of herself and John into this queer room, called
Cosy in an inscription on the door, by entering in the narrow passage
first in order, and suddenly turning round upon them with extended arms,
as if they had been two sheep. The room was lighted for their reception.
‘Now,’ said Mr Inspector to John, turning the gas lower; ‘I’ll mix with
’em in a casual way, and when I say Identification, perhaps you’ll show
yourself.’
John nodded, and Mr Inspector went alone to the half-door of the bar.
From the dim doorway of Cosy, within which Bella and her husband stood,
they could see a comfortable little party of three persons sitting at
supper in the bar, and could hear everything that was said.
The three persons were Miss Abbey and two male guests. To whom
collectively, Mr Inspector remarked that the weather was getting sharp
for the time of year.
‘It need be sharp to suit your wits, sir,’ said Miss Abbey. ‘What have
you got in hand now?’
‘Thanking you for your compliment: not much, Miss Abbey,’ was Mr
Inspector’s rejoinder.
‘Who have you got in Cosy?’ asked Miss Abbey.
‘Only a gentleman and his wife, Miss.’
‘And who are they? If one may ask it without detriment to your deep
plans in the interests of the honest public?’ said Miss Abbey, proud of
Mr Inspector as an administrative genius.
‘They are strangers in this part of the town, Miss Abbey. They are
waiting till I shall want the gentleman to show himself somewhere, for
half a moment.’
‘While they’re waiting,’ said Miss Abbey, ‘couldn’t you join us?’
Mr Inspector immediately slipped into the bar, and sat down at the side
of the half-door, with his back towards the passage, and directly facing
the two guests. ‘I don’t take my supper till later in the night,’ said
he, ‘and therefore I won’t disturb the compactness of the table. But
I’ll take a glass of flip, if that’s flip in the jug in the fender.’
‘That’s flip,’ replied Miss Abbey, ‘and it’s my making, and if even you
can find out better, I shall be glad to know where.’ Filling him, with
hospitable hands, a steaming tumbler, Miss Abbey replaced the jug by
the fire; the company not having yet arrived at the flip-stage of their
supper, but being as yet skirmishing with strong ale.
‘Ah—h!’ cried Mr Inspector. ‘That’s the smack! There’s not a Detective
in the Force, Miss Abbey, that could find out better stuff than that.’
‘Glad to hear you say so,’ rejoined Miss Abbey. ‘You ought to know, if
anybody does.’
‘Mr Job Potterson,’ Mr Inspector continued, ‘I drink your health. Mr
Jacob Kibble, I drink yours. Hope you have made a prosperous voyage
home, gentlemen both.’
Mr Kibble, an unctuous broad man of few words and many mouthfuls, said,
more briefly than pointedly, raising his ale to his lips: ‘Same to you.’
Mr Job Potterson, a semi-seafaring man of obliging demeanour, said,
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Lord bless my soul and body!’ cried Mr Inspector. ‘Talk of trades, Miss
Abbey, and the way they set their marks on men’ (a subject which nobody
had approached); ‘who wouldn’t know your brother to be a Steward!
There’s a bright and ready twinkle in his eye, there’s a neatness in his
action, there’s a smartness in his figure, there’s an air of reliability
about him in case you wanted a basin, which points out the steward! And
Mr Kibble; ain’t he Passenger, all over? While there’s that mercantile
cut upon him which would make you happy to give him credit for five
hundred pound, don’t you see the salt sea shining on him too?’
‘YOU do, I dare say,’ returned Miss Abbey, ‘but I don’t. And as for
stewarding, I think it’s time my brother gave that up, and took his
House in hand on his sister’s retiring. The House will go to pieces if
he don’t. I wouldn’t sell it for any money that could be told out, to a
person that I couldn’t depend upon to be a Law to the Porters, as I have
been.’
‘There you’re right, Miss,’ said Mr Inspector. ‘A better kept house is
not known to our men. What do I say? Half so well a kept house is not
known to our men. Show the Force the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters,
and the Force—to a constable—will show you a piece of perfection, Mr
Kibble.’
That gentleman, with a very serious shake of his head, subscribed the
article.
‘And talk of Time slipping by you, as if it was an animal at rustic
sports with its tail soaped,’ said Mr Inspector (again, a subject which
nobody had approached); ‘why, well you may. Well you may. How has it
slipped by us, since the time when Mr Job Potterson here present, Mr
Jacob Kibble here present, and an Officer of the Force here present,
first came together on a matter of Identification!’
Bella’s husband stepped softly to the half-door of the bar, and stood
there.
‘How has Time slipped by us,’ Mr Inspector went on slowly, with his eyes
narrowly observant of the two guests, ‘since we three very men, at an
Inquest in this very house—Mr Kibble? Taken ill, sir?’
Mr Kibble had staggered up, with his lower jaw dropped, catching
Potterson by the shoulder, and pointing to the half-door. He now cried
out: ‘Potterson! Look! Look there!’ Potterson started up, started back,
and exclaimed: ‘Heaven defend us, what’s that!’ Bella’s husband stepped
back to Bella, took her in his arms (for she was terrified by the
unintelligible terror of the two men), and shut the door of the little
room. A hurry of voices succeeded, in which Mr Inspector’s voice was
busiest; it gradually slackened and sank; and Mr Inspector reappeared.
‘Sharp’s the word, sir!’ he said, looking in with a knowing wink. ‘We’ll
get your lady out at once.’ Immediately, Bella and her husband were
under the stars, making their way back, alone, to the vehicle they had
kept in waiting.
All this was most extraordinary, and Bella could make nothing of it but
that John was in the right. How in the right, and how suspected of being
in the wrong, she could not divine. Some vague idea that he had never
really assumed the name of Handford, and that there was a remarkable
likeness between him and that mysterious person, was her nearest
approach to any definite explanation. But John was triumphant; that much
was made apparent; and she could wait for the rest.
When John came home to dinner next day, he said, sitting down on the
sofa by Bella and baby-Bella: ‘My dear, I have a piece of news to tell
you. I have left the China House.’
As he seemed to like having left it, Bella took it for granted that
there was no misfortune in the case.
‘In a word, my love,’ said John, ‘the China House is broken up and
abolished. There is no such thing any more.’
‘Then, are you already in another House, John?’
‘Yes, my darling. I am in another way of business. And I am rather
better off.’
The inexhaustible baby was instantly made to congratulate him, and