elocution, his overpoweringly comic domestic passages with Judy, and the dolefully funny dog with a frill round his neck and an evident dislike for his profession—this, indeed, was an exhibition to be seen continually, and to be more admired the more continually seen, as no doubt the “fondling” would have said had he been familiar with Dr. Johnson, which, it is to be hoped, for his own peace of mind, he wasn’t.
It is rather a trying day for Mr. Peters, and he is not sorry when, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, he has taken the “fondling” all round the Bank of England—(that young gentleman insisting on peering in at the great massive windows, in the fond hope of seeing the money)—and has shown him the broad back of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, and the Clearing-house, and they are going out of Lombard Street, on their way to an omnibus which will take them home. But just as they are leaving the street the “fondling” makes a dead stop, and constrains Mr. Peters to do the same.
Standing before the glass doors of a handsome building, which a brass plate announces to be the “Anglo-Spanish-American Bank,” are two horses, and a groom in faultless buckskins and tops. He is evidently waiting for some one within the bank, and the “fondling”vehemently insists upon waiting too, to see the gentleman get on horseback. The good-natured detective consents; and they loiter about the pavement for some time before the glass doors are flung open by a white-neckclothed clerk, and a gentleman of rather foreign appearance emerges therefrom.
There is nothing particularly remarkable in this gentleman. The fit of his pale lavender gloves is certainly exquisite; the style of his dress is a recommendation to his tailor; but what there is in his appearance to occasion Mr. Peters’s holding on to a lamp-post it is difficult to say. But Mr. Peters did certainly cling to the nearest lamp-post, and did certainly turn as white as the whitest sheet of paper that ever came out of a stationer’s shop. The elegant-looking gentleman, who was no other than the Count de Marolles, had better occupation for his bright blue eyes than the observation of such small deer as Mr. Peters and the “fondling.” He mounted his horse, and rode slowly away, quite unconscious of the emotion his appearance had occasioned in the breast of the detective. No sooner had he done so, than Mr. Peters, relinquishing the lamp-post and clutching the astonished “fondling,” darted after him. In a moment he was in the crowded thoroughfare before Guildhall. An empty cab passed close to them. He hailed it with frantic gesticulations, and sprang in, still holding the “fondling.” The Count de Marolles had to rein-in his horse for a moment from the press of cabs and omnibuses; and at Mr. Peters’s direction the “fondling” pointed him out to the cabman, with the emphatic injunction to “follow that gent, and not to lose sight of him nohow.” The charioteer gives a 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, discoursively, “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. Pauls, 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.
