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
