The trail of the serpent
As he speaks he softly opens the window and fires at the man in the
garden, who falls, only uttering a groan. As Raymond predicted, he
faints with the pain.
With the rapidity of lightning he flings the window up violently,
hurls the pistol to the farthest extremity of the garden, snatches the
Marquis’s hat from the chair on which it lies, presses one finger on
the gilded back of a volume of Gibbon’s _Rome_, a narrow slip of
the bookcase opens inwards, and reveals a door leading into the next
apartment, which is the dining-room. This door is made on a peculiar
principle, and, as he pushes through, it closes behind him.
This is the work of a second; and as the officers, alarmed by the sound
of the opening of the window, rush into the room, the Marquis gives the
alarm. “He has escaped by the window!” he said. “He has wounded your
assistant, and passed through that door. He cannot be twenty yards in
advance; you will easily know him by his having no hat on.”
“Stop!” cries the detective officer, “this may be a trap. He may have
got round to the front door. Go and watch, Johnson.”
A little too late this precaution. As the officers rushed into the
library, Raymond passed from the dining-room door out of the open
street-door, and jumped into the very cab which was waiting to take him
to prison. “Five pounds, if you catch the Liverpool Express,” he said
to the cabman.
“All right, sir,” replied that worthy citizen, with a wink. “I’ve
druv a many gents like you, and very good fares they is too, and a
godsend to a hard-working man, what old ladies with hand-bags and
umbrellas grudges eightpence a mile to,” mutters the charioteer, as he
gallops down Upper Brook Street and across Hanover Square, while the
gentlemen of the police force, aided by Dr. Tappenden and the obliging
Marquis, search the mews and neighbourhood adjoining. Strange to say,
they cannot obtain any information from the coachman and stable-boys
concerning a gentleman without a hat, who must have passed through the
mews about three minutes before.
CHAPTER III.
THE LEFT-HANDED SMASHER MAKES HIS MARK.
“IT is a palpable and humiliating proof of the decadence of the
glories of white-cliffed Albion and her lion-hearted children,” said
the sporting correspondent of the _Liverpool Bold Speaker and
Threepenny Aristides_--a gentleman who, by the bye, was very clever
at naming--for half-a-dozen stamps--the horses that _didn’t_
win; and was, indeed, useful to fancy betters, as affording accurate
information what to avoid; nothing being better policy than to give the
odds against any horse named by him as a sure winner, or a safe second:
for those gallant steeds were sure to be, whatever the fluctuating
fortune of the race, ignominiously nowhere. “It is”, continued the
_Liverpool B. S._, “a sign of the downfalling of the lion and
unicorn--over which Britannia may shed tears and the inhabitants of
Liverpool and its vicinity mourn in silent despair--that the freedom of
England is no more! We repeat (_The Liverpool Aristides_ here gets
excited, and goes into small capitals)--BRITAIN is no longer
FREE! Her freedom departed from her on that day on which the
blue-coated British Sbirri of Sir Robert Peel broke simultaneously into
the liberties of the nation, the mightiest clauses of Magna Charta,
and the Prize Ring, and stopped the operations of the Lancashire Daddy
Longlegs and the celebrated Metropolitan favourite, the Left-handed
Smasher, during the eighty-ninth round, and just as the real interest
of the fight was about to begin. Under these humiliating circumstances,
a meeting has been held by the referees and backers of the men, and
it has been agreed between the latter and the stakeholder to draw the
money. But, that the valiant and admired Smasher may have no occasion
to complain of the inhospitality of the town of Liverpool, the patrons
of the fancy have determined on giving him a dinner, at which his late
opponent, our old favourite and honoured townsman, Daddy Longlegs,
will be in the chair, having a distinguished gentleman of sporting
celebrity as his vice. It is to be hoped that, as some proof that
the noble art of self-defence is not entirely extinct in Liverpool,
the friends of the Ring will muster pretty strong on this occasion.
Tickets, at half-a-guinea, to be obtained at the Gloves Tavern, where
the entertainment will take place.”
On the very day on which the Count de Marolles left his establishment
in Park Lane in so very abrupt a manner, the tributary banquet to the
genius of the Ring, in the person of the Left-handed Smasher, came
off in excellent style at the above-mentioned Gloves Tavern--a small
hostelry, next door to one of the Liverpool minor theatres, and chiefly
supported by the members of the Thespian and pugilistic arts. The
dramatic element, perhaps, rather predominated in the small parlour
behind the bar, where Brandolph of the Burning Brand--after fighting
sixteen terrific broadsword combats, and being left for dead behind
the first grooves seven times in the course of three acts--would
take his Welsh rarebit and his pint of half-and-half in company with
the Lancashire Grinder and the Pottery Pet, and listen with due
solemnity to the discourse of these two popular characters. The little
parlour was so thickly hung with portraits of theatrical and sporting
celebrities, that Œdipus himself--distinguished as he is for having
guessed the dullest of conundrums--could never have discovered the
pattern of the paper which adorned the walls. Here, Mr. Montmorency,
the celebrated comedian, smirked--with that mild smirk only known in
portraits--over the ample shoulders of his very much better half, at
the Pet in fighting attitude. There, Mr. Marmaduke Montressor, the
great tragedian, frowned, in the character of Richard the Third, at
Pyrrhus the First, winner of the last Derby. Here, again, Mademoiselle
Pasdebasque pointed her satin slipper side by side with the youthful
Challoner of that day; and opposite Mademoiselle Pasdebasque, a
gentleman in scarlet, whose name is unknown, tumbled off a burnt-sienna
horse, in excellent condition, and a very high state of varnish, into
a Prussian-blue ditch, thereby filling the spectator with apprehension
lest he should be, not drowned, but dyed. As to Brandolph of the Brand,
there were so many pictures of him, in so many different attitudes,
and he was always looking so very handsome and doing something so
very magnanimous, that perhaps, upon the whole, it was rather a
disappointment to look from the pictures down to the original of them
in the dingy costume of private life, seated at the shiny little
mahogany table, partaking of refreshment.
The theatrical profession mustered pretty strongly to do honour to the
sister art on this particular occasion. The theatre next door to the
Gloves happened, fortunately, to be closed, on account of the extensive
scale of preparations for a grand dramatic and spectacular performance,
entitled, “The Sikh Victories; or, The Tyrant of the Ganges,” which
was to be brought out the ensuing Monday, with even more than usual
magnificence. So the votaries of Thespis were free to testify their
admiration for the noble science of self-defence, by taking tickets
for the dinner at ten-and-sixpence a piece, the banquet being, as Mr.
Montressor, the comedian above-mentioned, remarked, with more energy
than elegance, a cheap blow-out, as the dinner would last the guests
who partook of it two days, and the indigestion attendant thereon would
carry them through the rest of the week.
I shall not enter into the details of the pugilistic dinner, but will
introduce the reader into the banquet-hall at rather a late stage in
the proceedings; in point of fact, just as the festival is about to
break up. It is two o’clock in the morning; the table is strewn with
the _débris_ of a dessert, in which figs, almonds and raisins,
mixed biscuits, grape-stalks, and apple and orange-peel seem rather
to predominate. The table is a very field of Cressy or Waterloo,
as to dead men in the way of empty bottles; good execution having
evidently been done upon Mr. Hemmar’s well-stocked cellar. From the
tumblers and spoons before each guest, however, it is also evident that
the festive throng has followed the example of Mr. Sala’s renowned
hero, and after having tried a “variety of foreign drains,” has gone
back to gin-and-water _pur et simple_. It is rather a peculiar
and paradoxical quality of neat wines that they have, if anything,
rather an untidy effect on those who drink them: certainly there is a
looseness about the hair, a thickness and indecision in the speech,
and an erratic and irrelevant energy and emphasis in the gestures of
the friends of the Smasher, which is entirely at variance with our
ordinary idea of the word “neat.” Yet, why should we quarrel with them
on that account? They are harmless and they are happy. It is surely no
crime to see two gas burners where, to the normal eye, there is only
one; neither is it criminal to try five distinct times to enunciate
the two words, “slightest misunderstanding,” and to fail ignominiously
every time. If anything, that must be an amiable feeling which inspires
a person with a sudden wild and almost pathetic friendship for a man
he never saw before; such a friendship, in short, as pants to go to
the block for him, or to become his surety to a loan-office for five
pounds. Is it any such terrible offence against society to begin a
speech of a patriotic nature, full of allusions to John Bull, Queen
Victoria, Wooden Walls, and the Prize Ring, and to burst into tears in
the middle thereof? Is there no benevolence in the wish to see your
friend home, on account of your strong impression that he has taken
a little too much, and that he will tumble against the railings and
impale his chin upon the spikes; which, of course, _you_ are in
no danger of doing? Are these things crimes? No! We answer boldly, No!
Then, hurrah for neat wines and free trade! Open wide our harbours to
the purple grapes that flourish in the vineyards of sunny Burgundy and
Bordeaux; and welcome, thrice welcome, to the blushing tides which
Horace sang so many hundred years ago, when our beautiful Earth was
younger, and maybe fairer, and held its course, though it is hard to
believe it, very well indeed, without the genius of modern civilization
at the helm.
There had been a silver cup, with one of the labours of Hercules--poor
Hercules, how hard they work him in the sporting world!--embossed
thereon, presented to the Smasher, as a tribute of respect for those
British qualities which had endeared him to his admirers; and the
Smasher’s health had been drunk with three-times-three, and a little
one in; and then three more three-times-three, and another little one
in; and the Smasher had returned thanks, and Brandolph of the Brand
had proposed the Daddy Longlegs, and the Daddy Longlegs had made a
very neat speech in the Lancashire dialect, which the gentlemen of
the theatrical profession had pretended to understand, but had not
understood; and a literary individual--being, in fact, the gentleman
whose spirited writing we have quoted above, Mr. Jeffrey Hallam
Jones, of the _Liverpool Aristides_, sporting and theatrical
correspondent, and constant visitor at the Gloves--had proposed the
Ring; and the Smasher had proposed the Press, for the liberties
of which, as he said in noble language afterwards quoted in the
_Aristides_, the gentlemen of the Prize Ring were prepared
to fight as long as they had a bunch of fives to rattle upon the
knowledge-box of the foe; and then the Daddy Longlegs had proposed the
Stage, and its greatest glory, Brandolph of the Brand; and ultimately