The trail of the serpent

delightful person, I am extremely glad to hear it, as it relieves me from the trouble. It is melodramatic certainly, but excessively convenient. I have remarked, that in melodrama circumstances generally are convenient. I never alarm myself when everything is hopelessly wrong, and villainy deliciously triumphant; for I know that somebody who died in the first act will come in at the centre doors, and make it all right before the curtain falls.” “Since Madame de Marolles will no doubt wish to be alone with her uncle, I may perhaps be permitted to go into the City till dinner, when I shall have the honour of meeting Monsieur le Marquis, I trust.” “Certainly, my good De Marolles; your chef, I believe, understands his profession. I shall have great pleasure in dining with you. _Au revoir, mon enfant_; we shall go upon velvet, now we so thoroughly understand each other.” He waves his white left hand to Raymond, as a graceful dismissal, and turns towards his niece. “Adieu, madame,” says the Count, as he passes his wife; then, in a lower tone, adds, “I do not ask you to be silent for my sake or your own; I merely recommend you to remember that you have a son, and that you will do well not to make me your enemy. When I strike, I strike home, and my policy has always been to strike in the weakest place. Do not forget poor little Cherubino!” He looks at her steadily with his cruel blue eyes, and then turns to leave the room. As he opens the door, he almost knocks down an elderly gentleman dressed in a suit of clerical-looking black and a white neckcloth, and carrying an unpleasantly damp umbrella under his arm. “Not yet, Mr. Jabez North,” says the gentleman, who is neither more nor less than that respectable preceptor and guide to the youthful mind, Dr. Tappenden, of Slopperton--“not yet, Mr. North; I think your clerks in Lombard Street will be compelled to do without you to-day. You are wanted elsewhere at present.” Anything but this--anything but this, and he would have borne it, like--like himself! Thank Heaven there is no comparison for such as he. He was prepared for all but this. This early period of his life, which he thought blotted out and forgotten--this he is unprepared for; and he falls back with a ghastly face, and white lips that refuse to shape even one exclamation of horror or surprise. “What is this?” murmurs the Marquis. “North--Jabez--Jabez North? Oh, I see, we have come upon the pre-Parisian formation, and that,” he glances towards Dr. Tappenden, “is one of the vestiges.” At last Raymond’s tremulous lips consent to form the words he struggles to utter. “You are under some mistake, sir, whoever you may be. My name is not North, and I have not the honour of your acquaintance. I am a Frenchman; my name is De Marolles. I am not the person you seek.” A gentleman advances from the doorway--(there is quite a group of people in the hall)--and says-- “At least, sir, you are the person who presented, eight years ago, three forged cheques at my bank. I am ready, as well as two of my clerks, to swear to your identity. We have people here with a warrant to arrest you for that forgery.” The forgery, not the murder?--no one knows of that, then--that, at least, is buried in oblivion. “There are two or three little things out against you, Mr. North,” said the doctor; “but the forgery will serve our purpose very well for the present. It’s the easiest charge to bring home as yet.” What do they mean? What other charges? Come what may, he will be firm to the last--to the last he will be himself. After all, it is but death they can threaten him with, and the best people have to die, as well as the worst. “Only death, at most!” he mutters. “Courage, Raymond, and finish the game as a good player should, without throwing away a trick, even though beaten by better cards.” “I tell you, gentlemen, I know nothing of your forgery, or you either. I am a Frenchman, born at Bordeaux, and never in your very eccentric country before; and indeed, if this is the sort of thing a gentleman is liable to in his own study, I shall certainly, when I once return to France, never visit your shores again.” “_When_ you do return to France, I think it very unlikely you will ever revisit England, as you say, sir. If, as you affirm, you are indeed a Frenchman--(what excellent English you speak, monsieur, and what trouble you must have taken to acquire so perfect an accent!)--you will, of course, have no difficulty in proving the fact; also that you were not in England eight years ago, and consequently were not for some years assistant in the academy of this gentleman at Slopperton. All this an enlightened British jury will have much pleasure in hearing. We have not, however, come to try you, but to arrest you. Johnson, call a cab for the Count de Marolles! If we are wrong, monsieur, you will have a magnificent case of false imprisonment, and I congratulate you on the immense damages which you will most likely obtain. Thomson, the handcuffs! I must trouble you for your wrists, Monsieur de Marolles.” The police officer politely awaits the pleasure of his prisoner. Raymond pauses for a moment; thinks deeply, with his head bent on his breast; lifts it suddenly with a glitter in his eyes, and his thin lips set firm as iron. He has arranged his game. “As you say, sir, I shall have an excellent case of false imprisonment, and my accusers shall pay for their insolence, as well as for their mistake. In the meantime, I am ready to follow you; but, before I do so, I wish to have a moment’s conversation with this gentleman, the uncle of my wife. You have, I suppose, no objection to leaving me alone with him for a few minutes. You can watch outside in the hall; I shall not attempt to escape. We have, unfortunately, no trap-doors in this room, and I believe they do not build the houses in Park Lane with such conveniences attached to them as sliding panels or secret staircases.” “Perhaps not, sir,” replies the inflexible police officer; “but they do, I perceive, build them with gardens”--he walks to the window, and looks out--“a wall eight feet high--door leading into mews. Not by any means such a very inconvenient house, Monsieur de Marolles. Thomson, one of the servants will be so good as to show you the way into the garden below these windows, where you will amuse yourself till this gentleman has done talking with his uncle.” “One moment--one moment,” says the Marquis, who, during the foregoing conversation has been entirely absorbed in the endeavour to extract a very obstinate speck of dust from Mark Antony’s nostril. “One moment, I beg”--as the officer is about to withdraw--“why an interview? Why a police person in the garden--if you call that dreadful stone dungeon with the roof off a garden? I have nothing to say to this gentleman. Positively nothing. All I ever had to say to him I said ten minutes ago. We perfectly understand each other. He can have nothing to say to me, or I to him; and really, I think, under the circumstances, the very best thing you can do is to put on that unbecoming iron machinery--I never saw a thing of the kind before, and, as a novelty, it is actually quite interesting”--(he touches the handcuffs that are lying on the table with the extreme tip of his taper third finger, hastily withdrawing it as if he thought they would bite)--“and to take him away immediately. If he has committed a forgery, you know,” he adds, deprecatingly, “he is not the sort of thing one likes to see about one. He really is not.” Raymond de Marolles never had, perhaps, too much of that absurd weakness called love for one’s fellow-creatures; but if ever he hated any man with the blackest and bitterest hate of his black and bitter heart, so did he hate the man standing now before him, twisting a ring round and round his delicate finger, and looking as entirely at his ease as if no point were in discussion of more importance than the wet weather and the cold autumn day. “Stay, Monsieur le Marquis de Cevennes,” he said, in a tone of suppressed passion, “you are too hasty in your conclusions. You have nothing to say to me. Granted! But I may have something to say to you--and I have a great deal to say to you, which must be said; if not in private, then in public--if not by word of mouth, I will print it in the public journals, till Paris and London shall ring with the sound of it on the lips of other men. You will scarcely care for this alternative, Monsieur de Cevennes, when you learn _what_ it is I have to say. Your _sang froid_ does you credit, monsieur; especially when, just now, though you could not repress a start of surprise at hearing that gentleman,” he indicates Dr. Tappenden with a wave of his hand, “speak of a certain manufacturing town called Slopperton, you, so rapidly regained your composure that only so close an observer as myself would have perceived your momentary agitation. You appear entirely to ignore, monsieur, the existence of a certain aristocratic emigrant’s son, who thirty years ago taught French and mathematics in that very town of Slopperton. Nevertheless, there was such a person, and you knew him--although he was content to teach his native language for a shilling a lesson, and had at that period no cameo or emerald rings to twist round his fingers.” If the Marquis was ever to be admired in the whole course of his career, he was to be admired at this moment. He smiled a gentle and deprecating smile, and said, in his politest tone-- “Pardon me, he had eighteenpence a lesson--eighteenpence, I assure you; and he was often invited to dinner at the houses where he taught. The women adored him--they are so simple, poor things. He might have married a manufacturer’s daughter, with an immense fortune, thick ancles, and erratic h’s.” “But he did not marry any one so distinguished. Monsieur de Cevennes, I see you understand me. I do not ask you to grant me this interview in the name of justice or humanity, because I do not wish to address you in a language which is a foreign one to me, and which you do not even comprehend; but in the name of that young Frenchman of noble family, who was so very weak and foolish, so entirely false to himself and to his own principles, as to marry a woman because he loved, or fancied that he loved her, I say to you, Monsieur le Marquis, you will find it to your interest to hear what I have to reveal.” The Marquis shrugs his shoulders slightly. “As you please,” he says. “Gentlemen, be good enough to remain outside that door. My dear Valerie, you had better retire to your own apartments. My poor child, all this must be so extremely wearisome to you--almost as bad as the third volume of a fashionable novel. Monsieur de Marolles, I am prepared to hear what you may have to say--though”--he here addresses himself generally--“I beg to protest against this affair from first to last--I repeat, from first to last--it is so intolerably melodramatic.” CHAPTER II. RAYMOND DE MAROLLES SHOWS HIMSELF BETTER THAN ALL BOW STREET. “AND so, Monsieur de Marolles,” said the Marquis, as Raymond closed the door on the group in the hall, and the two gentlemen were left entirely alone, “and so you have--by what means I shall certainly not so far inconvenience myself as to endeavour to guess--contrived to become informed of some of the antecedents of your very humble servant?” “Of some of the antecedents--why not say of all the antecedents, Monsieur de Cevennes?” “Just as you like, my dear young friend,” replies the Marquis. He really seems to get quite affectionate to Raymond, but in a far-off, patronizing, and superb manner something that of a gentlemanly