do you call him? Nemo?' says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
'Nemo, sir. Here it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night, at eight o'clock; brought in on the Thursday morning, at half after nine.'
'Nemo!' repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. 'Nemo is Latin for no one.'
'It must be English for some one, sir, I think,' Mr. Snagsby submits, with his deferential cough. 'It is a person's name. Here it is, you see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o'clock; brought in Thursday morning, half after nine.'
The tail of Mr. Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs. Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs. Snagsby, as who should say, 'My dear, a customer!'
'Half after nine, sir,' repeats Mr. Snagsby. 'Our law-writers, who live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but it's the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the King's Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know the kind of document, sir – wanting employ?'
Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavinses' windows. Coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr. Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head, to glance over his shoulder at his little woman, and to make apologetic motions with his mouth to this effect: 'Tul-king-horn – rich – in-flu-en-tial!'
'Have you given this man work before!' asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
'O dear, yes, sir! Work of yours.'
'Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he lived?'
'Across the lane, sir. In fact he lodges at a—' Mr. Snagsby makes another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable—'at a rag and bottle shop.'
'Can you show me the place as I go back?'
'With the greatest pleasure, sir!'
Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his black coat, takes his hat from its peg. 'Oh! here is my little woman!' he says aloud. 'My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one of the lads to look after the shop, while I step across the lane with Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir – I shan't be two minutes, my love!'
Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office, refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently curious.
'You will find that the place is rough, sir,' says Mr. Snagsby, walking deferentially in the road, and leaving the narrow pavement to the lawyer; 'and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is, that he never wants sleep. He'll go at it right on end, if you want him to, as long as ever you like.'
It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against plaintiffs and defendants, and suitors of all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest business of life – diving through law and equity, and through that kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what, and collects about us nobody knows whence or how: we only knowing in general that when there is too much of it, we find it necessary to shovel it away – the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a Rag and Bottle shop, and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
'This is where he lives, sir,' says the law-stationer.
'This is where he lives, is it?' says the lawyer unconcernedly. 'Thank you.'
'Are you not going in, sir?'
'No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good evening. Thank you!' Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat, and returns to his little woman and his tea.
But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed candle in his hand.
'Pray is your lodger within?'
'Male or female, sir?' says Mr. Krook.
'Male. The person who does copying.'
Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
'Did you wish to see him, sir?'
'Yes.'
'It's what I seldom do myself,' says Mr. Krook with a grin. 'Shall I call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!'
'I'll go up to him, then,' says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
'Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!' Mr. Krook, with his cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after Mr. Tulkinghorn. 'Hi – hi!' he says, when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat expands her wicked mouth, and snarls at him.
'Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know what they say of my lodger?' whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
'What do they say of him?'
'They say he has sold himself to the Enemy; but you and I know better – he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so black-humoured and gloomy, that I believe he'd as soon make that bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!'
Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it, if he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as if Poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner by the chimney, stand a deal table and a broken desk; a wilderness marked with a rain of ink. In another corner, a ragged old portmanteau on one of the two chairs, serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The floor is bare; except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn together; and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine might be staring in – the Banshee of the man upon the bed.
For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patch-work, lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a candle that has guttered down, until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over, and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard – the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the
