The trail of the serpent
and standing high and dry upon somebody else’s boots, breathing
gentlemanly and polyglot execrations upon the surrounding crowd,
when, in swaying to and fro, it disturbed or attempted to disturb his
serenity. So, when he said he would cut down to the Cherokees, he of
course meant that he would cut after his manner; and he accordingly
rolled languidly along the deserted pavements of the Strand, with
something of the insouciant and purposeless manner that Rasselas may
have had in a walk through the arcades of his happy valley. He reached
the well-known tavern at last, however, and stopping under the sign
of the washed-out Indian desperately tomahawking nothing, in the
direction of Covent Garden, with an arm more distinguished for muscular
development than correct drawing, he gave the well-known signal of the
club, and was admitted by the damsel before described, who appeared
always to devote the watches of the night to the process of putting
her hair in papers, that she might wear that becoming “head” for the
admiration of the jug-and-bottle customers of the following day, and
shine in a frame of very long and very greasy curls that were apt
to sweep the heads off brown stouts, and dip gently into “goes” of
spirits upon the more brilliant company of the evening. This young
lady, popularly known as ’Liza, was well up in the sporting business
of the house, read the _Life_ during church-time on Sundays, and
was even believed to have communicated with that Rhadamanthine journal,
under the signature of L., in the answers to correspondents. She was
understood to be engaged, or, as her friends and admirers expressed it,
to be “keeping company” with that luminary of the P.R., the Middlesex
Mawler, whose head-quarters were at the Cherokee.
Mr. Cordonner found three Cheerfuls assembled in the bar, in a state
of intense excitement and soda-water. A telegraphic message had just
arrived from the Smasher. It was worthy, in economy of construction, of
the Delphic oracle, and had the advantage of being easy to understand.
It was as follows--“Tell R. M. _he’s_ here: had no orders, so went
in with left: he won’t be able to move for a day or two.”
Mr. Cordonner was almost surprised, and was thus very nearly false,
for once in his life, to the only art he knew. “This will be good news
in Spring Gardens,” he said; “but Peters won’t be back till to-morrow
night. Suppose,” he added, musing, “we were to telegraph to him at
Slopperton instanter? I know where he hangs out there. If anybody
could find a cab and take the message it would be doing Marwood an
inestimable service,” added Mr. Cordonner, passing through the bar, and
lazily seating himself on a green-and-gold Cream of the Valley cask,
with his hat very much on the back of his head, and his hands in his
pockets. “I’ll write the message.”
He scribbled upon a card--“Go across to Liverpool. He’s given us the
slip, and is there;” and handed it politely towards the three Cheerfuls
who were leaning over the pewter counter.
Splitters, the dramatic author, clutched the document eagerly; to his
poetic mind it suggested that best gift of inspiration, “a situation.”
“I’ll take it,” he said; “what a fine line it would make in a bill!
‘The intercepted telegram,’ with a comic railway clerk, and the villain
of the piece cutting the wires!”
“Away with you, Splitters,” said Percy Cordonner. “Don’t let the
Strand become verdant beneath your airy tread. Don’t stop to compose a
five-act drama as you go, that’s a good fellow. ’Liza, my dear girl,
a pint of your creamiest Edinburgh, and let it be as mild as the
disposition of your humble servant.”
Three days after the above conversation, three gentlemen were assembled
at breakfast in a small room in a tavern overlooking the quay at
Liverpool. This triangular party consisted of the Smasher, in an
elegant and simple morning costume, consisting of tight trousers of
Stuart plaid, an orange-coloured necktie, a blue checked waistcoat,
and shirt-sleeves. The Smasher looked upon a coat as an essentially
outdoor garment, and would no more have invested himself in it to eat
his breakfast than he would have partaken of that refreshment with his
hat on, or an umbrella up. The two other gentlemen were Mr. Darley,
and his chief, Mr. Peters, who had a little document in his pocket
signed by a Lancashire magistrate, on which he set considerable value.
They had come across to Liverpool as directed by the telegraph, and
had there met with the Smasher, who had received letters for them
from London with the details of the escape, and orders to be on the
look-out for Peters and Gus. Since the arrival of these two, the trio
had led a sufficiently idle and apparently purposeless life. They had
engaged an apartment overlooking the quay, in the window of which they
were seated for the best part of the day, playing the intellectual
and exciting game of all-fours. There did not seem much in this to
forward the cause of Richard Marwood. It is true that Mr. Peters was
wont to vanish from the room every now and then, in order to speak to
mysterious and grave-looking gentlemen, who commanded respect wherever
they went, and before whom the most daring thief in Liverpool shrank
as before Mr. Calcraft himself. He held strange conferences with them
in corners of the hostelry in which the trio had taken up their abode;
he went out with them, and hovered about the quays and the shipping; he
prowled about in the dusk of the evening, and meeting these gentlemen
also prowling in the uncertain light, would sometimes salute them as
friends and brothers, at other times be entirely unacquainted with
them, and now and then interchange two or three hurried gestures with
them, which the close observer would have perceived to mean a great
deal. Beyond this, nothing had been done--and, in spite of all this,
no tidings could be obtained of the Count de Marolles, except that no
person answering to his description had left Liverpool either by land
or water. Still, neither Mr. Peters’s spirits nor patience failed him;
and after every interview held upon the stairs or in the passage, after
every excursion to the quays or the streets, he returned as briskly
as on the first day, and reseated himself at the little table by the
window, at which his colleagues--or rather his companions, for neither
Mr. Darley nor the Smasher were of the smallest use to him--played, and
took it in turns to ruin each other from morning till night. The real
truth of the matter was, that, if anything, the detective’s so-called
assistants were decidedly in his way; but Augustus Darley, having
distinguished himself in the escape from the asylum, considered himself
an amateur Vidocque; and the Smasher, from the moment of putting in
his left, and unconsciously advancing the cause of Richard and justice
by extinguishing the Count de Marolles, had panted to write his
name, or rather make his mark, upon the scroll of fame, by arresting
that gentleman in his own proper person, and without any extraneous
aid whatever. It was rather hard for him, then, to have to resign
the prospect of such a glorious adventure to a man of Mr. Peters’s
inches; but he was of a calm and amiable disposition, and would floor
his adversary with as much good temper as he would eat his favourite
dinner; so, with a growl of resignation, he abandoned the reins to
the steady hands so used to hold them, and seated himself down to the
consumption of innumerable clay pipes and glasses of bitter ale with
Gus, who, being one of the most ancient of the order of the Cherokees,
was an especial favourite with him.
On this third morning, however, there is a decided tone of weariness
pervading the minds of both Gus and the Smasher. Three-handed
all-fours, though a delicious and exciting game, will pall upon the
inconstant mind, especially when your third player is perpetually
summoned from the table to take part in a mysterious dialogue
with a person or persons unknown, the result of which he declines
to communicate to you. The view from the bow-window of the blue
parlour in the White Lion, Liverpool, is no doubt as animated as it
is beautiful; but Rasselas, we know, got tired of some very pretty
scenery, and there have been readers so inconstant as to grow weary
of Dr. Johnson’s book, and to go down peacefully to their graves
unacquainted with the climax thereof. So it is scarcely perhaps to
be wondered that the volatile Augustus thirsted for the waterworks
of Blackfriars; while the Smasher, feeling himself to be blushing
unseen, and wasting his stamina, if not his sweetness, on the desert
air, pined for the familiar shades of Bow Street and Vinegar Yard,
and the home-sounds of the rumbling and jingling of the wagons, and
the unpolite language of the drivers thereof, on market mornings
in the adjacent market. Pleasures and palaces are all very well in
their way, as the song says; but there is just one little spot on
earth which, whether it be a garret in Petticoat Lane or a mansion in
Belgrave Square, is apt to be dearer to us than the best of them; and
the Smasher languishes for the friendly touch of the ebony handles of
the porter-engine, and the scent of the Welsh rarebits of his youth.
Perhaps I express myself in a more romantic manner on this subject,
however, than I should do, for the remark of the Left-handed one, as
he pours himself out a cup of tea from the top of the tea-pot--he
despises the spout of that vessel as a modern innovation on ancient
simplicity--is as simple as it is energetic. He merely observes that
he is “jolly sick of this lot,”--this lot meaning Liverpool, the Count
de Marolles, the White Lion, three-handed all-fours, and the detective
police force.
“There was nobody ill in Friar Street when I left,” said Gus
mournfully; “but there had been a run upon Pimperneckel’s Universal
Regenerator Pills: and if that don’t make business a little brisker,
nothing will.”
“It’s my opinion,” observed the Smasher doggedly, “that this ’ere
forrin’ cove has give us the slip out and out; and the sooner we gets
back to London the better. I never was much of a hand at chasing wild
geese, and”--he added, with rather a spiteful glance at the mild
countenance of the detective--“I don’t see neither that standin’ and
makin’ signs to parties unbeknown at street-corners and stair-heads is
the quickest way to catch them sort of birds; leastways it’s not the
opinion held by the gents belongin’ to the Ring as I’ve had the honour
to make acquaintance with.”
“Suppose----” said Mr. Peters, on his fingers.
“Oh!” muttered the Smasher, “blow them fingers of his. I can’t
understand ’em--there!” The left-handed Hercules knew that this was to
attack the detective on his tenderest point. “Blest if I ever knows
his _p_’s from his _b_’s, or his _w_’s from his _x_’s, let alone his
vowels, and them would puzzle a conjuror.”
Mr. Peters glanced at the prize-fighter more in sorrow than in anger,
and taking out a greasy little pocket-book, and a greasier little
pencil, considerably the worse for having been vehemently chewed in
moments of preoccupation, he wrote upon a leaf of it thus--“Suppose we
catch him to-day?”
“Ah, very true,” said the Smasher sulkily, after he had examined the
document in two or three different lights before he came upon its full
bearings; “very true, indeed, suppose we do--and suppose we don’t, on
the other hand; and I know which is the likeliest. Suppose, Mr. Peters,
we give up lookin’ for a needle in a bundle of hay, which after a time
gets tryin’ to a lively disposition, and go back to our businesses. If
you had a girl as didn’t know British from best French a-servin’ of
_your_ customers,” he continued in an injured tone, “_you’d_
be anxious to get home, and let your forring counts go to the devil
their own ways.”