The trail of the serpent
“How about your friend, sir,” remonstrated the Smasher’s Hebe; “he
isn’t a Cheerful, is he, sir?”
“Oh, I’ll answer for him,” said Gus. “It’s all right, Sophia Maria;
bring us a couple of glasses of brandy-and-water hot, and tell the
Smasher to step up, when I ring the bell.”
Sophia Maria looked doubtfully from Gus to the slumbering host, and
said--
“He’ll wake up savage if I disturb him. He’s off for his first sleep
now, and he’ll go to bed as soon as the place is clear.”
“Never mind, Sophia; wake him up when I ring, and send him upstairs;
he’ll find something there to put him in a good temper. Come, Dick,
tumble up. You know the way.”
The Cheerful Cherokees made their proximity known by such a stifling
atmosphere of tobacco about the staircase as would have certainly
suffocated anyone not initiated in their mysteries. Gus opened the
door of a back room on the first floor, of a much larger size than
the general appearance of the house would have promised. This room was
full of gentlemen, who, in age, size, costume, and personal advantages,
varied as much as it is possible for any one roomful of gentlemen to
do. Some of them were playing billiards; some of them were looking on,
betting on the players; or more often upbraiding them for such play
as, in the Cheerful dialect, came under the sweeping denunciation of
the Cherokee adjective “duffing.” Some of them were eating a peculiar
compound entitled “Welsh rarebit”--a pleasant preparation, if it had
not painfully reminded the casual observer of mustard-poultices, or
yellow soap in a state of solution--while lively friends knocked the
ashes of their pipes into their plates, abstracted their porter just
as they were about to imbibe that beverage, and in like fascinating
manner beguiled the festive hour. One gentleman, a young Cherokee, had
had a rarebit, and had gone to sleep with his head in his plate and his
eyebrows in his mustard. Some were playing cards; some were playing
dominoes; one gentleman was in tears, because the double six he wished
to play had fallen into a neighbouring spittoon, and he lacked either
the moral courage or the physical energy requisite for picking it up;
but as, with the exception of the sleepy gentleman, everybody was
talking very loud and on an entirely different subject, the effect was
lively, not to say distracting.
“Gentlemen,” said Gus, “I have the honour of bringing a friend, whom I
wish to introduce to you.”
“All right, Gus!” said the gentleman engaged at dominoes, “that’s the
cove I ought to play,” and fixing one half-open eye on the spotted
ivory, he lapsed into a series of imbecile imprecations on everybody in
general, and the domino in particular.
Richard took a seat at a little distance from this gentleman, and at
the bottom of the long table--a seat sacred on grand occasions to the
vice-chairman. Some rather noisy lookers-on at the billiards were a
little inclined to resent this, and muttered something about Dick’s red
wig and whiskers, in connection with the popular accompaniments to a
boiled round of beef.
“I say, Darley,” cried a gentleman, who held a billiard-cue in his
hand, and had been for some time impotently endeavouring to smooth his
hair with the same. “I say, old fellow, I hope your friend’s committed
a murder or two, because then Splitters can put him in a new piece.”
Splitters, who had for four hours been in a state of abject misery,
from the unmerciful allusions to his last _chef d’œuvre_, gave
a growl from a distant corner of the table, where he was seeking
consolation in everybody else’s glass; and as everybody drank a
different beverage, was not improving his state of mind thereby.
“My friend never committed a murder in his life, Splitters, so he
won’t dramatize on that score; but he’s been accused of one; and he’s
as innocent as you are, who never murdered any thing in your life but
Lindley Murray and the language of your country.”
“Who’s been murdering somebody?” said the domino-player, passing his
left hand through his hair, till his chevelure resembled a turk’s-head
broom. “Who’s murdered? I wish everybody was; and that I could dance
my favourite dance upon their graves. Blow that double-six; he’s the
fellow I ought to play.”
“Perhaps you’ll give us your auburn-haired friend’s name, Darley,” said
a gentleman with his mouth full of Welsh rarebit; “he doesn’t seem too
brilliant to live; he’d better have gone to the ‘Deadly Livelies,’ in
the other street.” The “Deadly Livelies” was the sobriquet of a rival
club, which plumed itself on being a cut above the Cherokees. “Who’s
dead?” muttered the domino-player. “I wish everybody was, and that I
was contracted with to bury ’em cheap. I should have won the game,” he
added plaintively, “if I could have picked up that double-six.”
“I suppose your friend wants to be Vice at our next meeting,” said
the gentleman with the billiard-cue; who, in default of a row, always
complained that the assembly was too quiet for him.
“It wouldn’t be the first time if he were Vice, and it wouldn’t be the
first time if you made him Chair,” said Gus. “Come, old fellow, tell
them you’re come back, and ask them if they’re glad to see you?”
The red-haired gentleman at this sprang to his feet, threw off the rosy
locks and the ferocious whiskers, and looked round at the Cherokees
with his hands in his pockets.
“Daredevil Dick!” A shout arose--one brief wild huzza, such as
had not been heard in that room--which, as we know, was none of
the quietest--within the memory of the oldest Cherokee. Daredevil
Dick--escaped--come back--as handsome as ever--as jolly as ever--as
glorious a fellow--as thoroughgoing a brick--as noble-hearted a trump
as eight years ago, when he had been the life and soul of all of them!
such shaking of hands; everybody shaking hands with him again and
again, and then everybody shaking hands with everybody else; and the
billiard-player wiping his eyes with his cue; and the sleepy gentleman
waking up and rubbing the mustard into his drowsy optics; and the
domino-player, who, though he execrates all mankind, wouldn’t hurt the
tiniest wing of the tiniest fly, even he makes a miraculous effort,
picks up the double-six, and magnanimously presents it to Richard.
“Take it--take it, old fellow, and may it make you happy! If I’d played
that domino, I should have won the game.” Upon which he executed two
or three steps of a Cherokee dance, and relapsed into the aforesaid
imbecile imprecations, in mixed French and English, on the inhabitants
of a world not capable of appreciating him.
It was a long time before anything like quiet could be restored; but
when it was, Richard addressed the meeting.
“Gentlemen, before the unfortunate circumstance which has so long
separated us, you knew me, I believe, well, and I am proud to think you
esteemed and trusted me.”
Did they? Oh, _rather_. They jingled all the glasses, and broke
three in the enthusiastic protestation of an affirmative.
“I need not allude to the unhappy accusation of which I have been the
victim. You are, I understand, acquainted with the full particulars
of my miserable story, and you render me happy by thinking me to be
innocent.”
By thinking him to be innocent? By knowing him to be innocent! They
are so indignant at the bare thought of anybody believing otherwise,
that somebody in the doorway, the Smasher himself, growls out something
about a--forcible adjective--noise, and the police.
“Gentlemen, I have this day regained my liberty; thanks to the
exertions of a person to whom I am also indebted for my life, and
thanks also to the assistance of my old friend Gus Darley.”
Everybody here insisted on shaking hands over again with Gus, which was
rather a hindrance to the speaker’s progress; but at last Richard went
on,--
“Now, gentlemen, relying on your friendship” (hear, hear! and another
glass broken), “I am about to appeal to you to assist me in the future
object of my life. That object will be to discover the real murderer
of my uncle, Montague Harding. In what manner, when, or where you may
be able to assist me in this, I cannot at present say, but you are
all, gentlemen, men of talent.” (More glasses broken, and a good deal
of beer spilt into everybody’s boots.) “You are all men of varied
experience, of inexhaustible knowledge of the world, and of the life
of London. Strange things happen every day of our lives. Who shall
say that some one amongst you may not fall, by some strange accident,
or let me say rather by the handiwork of Providence, across a clue to
this at present entirely unravelled mystery? Promise me, therefore,
gentlemen, to give me the benefit of your experience; and whenever that
experience throws you into the haunts of bad men, remember that the man
I seek may, by some remote chance, be amongst them; and that to find
him is the one object of my life. I cannot give you the faintest index
to what he may be, or who he may be. He may be dead, and beyond the
reach of justice--but he may live! and if he does, Heaven grant that
the man who has suffered the stigma of his guilt may track him to his
doom. Gentlemen, tell me that your hearts go with me.”
They told him so, not once, but a dozen times; shaking hands with him,
and pushing divers liquors into his hand every time. But they got over
it at last, and the gentleman with the billiard-cue rapped their heads
with that instrument to tranquillize them, and then rose as president,
and said,--
“Richard Marwood, our hearts go with you, thoroughly and entirely, and
we swear to give you the best powers of our intellects and the utmost
strength of our abilities to aid you in your search. Gentlemen, are you
prepared to subscribe to this oath?”
They were prepared to subscribe to it, and they did subscribe to it,
every one of them--rather noisily, but very heartily.
When they had done so, a gentleman emerges from the shadow of the
doorway, who is no other than the illustrious left-handed one, who
had come upstairs in answer to Darley’s summons, just before Richard
addressed the Cherokees. The Smasher was not a handsome man. His nose
had been broken a good many times, and that hadn’t improved him; he had
a considerable number of scars about his face, including almost every
known variety of cut, and they didn’t improve him. His complexion,
again, bore perhaps too close a resemblance to mottled soap to come
within the region of the beautiful; but he had a fine and manly
expression of countenance, which, in his amiable moments, reminded the
beholder of a benevolent bulldog.
He came up to Richard, and took him by the hand. It was no small ordeal
of courage to shake hands with the Left-handed Smasher, but Daredevil
Dick stood it like a man.
“Mr. Richard Marwood,” said he, “you’ve been a good friend to me,
ever since you was old enough--” he stopped here, and cast about in
his mind for the fitting pursuits of early youth--“ever since you was
old enough to give a cove a black eye, or knock your friend’s teeth
down his throat with a light backhander. I’ve known you down stairs,
a-swearin’ at the barmaid, and holdin’ your own agin the whole lot
of the Cheerfuls, when other young gents of your age was a-makin’
themselves bad with sweetstuffs and green apples, and callin’ it life.
I’ve known you help that gent yonder,” he gave a jerk with his thumb
in the direction of the domino-player, “to wrench off his own pa’s
knocker, and send it to him by twopenny post next mornin’, seventeen
and sixpence to pay postage; but I never know’d you to do a bad action,
or to hit out upon a cove as was down.”
Richard thanked the Smasher for his good opinion, and they shook hands
again.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” continued the host, “I’m a man of few