The trail of the serpent
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 such-like. 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 to-day, 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 half-way 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 passers-by, 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 lamp-post 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 under-current of his
father. It’ll make him the glory of his profession. Soft-heartedness
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.”
CHAPTER 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 to-night? 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