The tow-headed youth (whose name was Harker) had just encored himself
for the nineteenth time, when he was struck into the extreme of
confusion by the discovery that he was not alone.

'There you have it!' cried a manly voice from the side of the road.

'That's as good as I want to hear. Perhaps a leetle oilier in the run,'
the voice suggested, with meditative gusto. 'Give it us again.'

Harker glanced, from the depths of his humiliation, at the speaker. He
beheld a powerful, sun-brown, clean-shaven fellow, about forty years of
age, striding beside the cart with a non-commissioned military bearing,
and (as he strode) spinning in the air a cane. The fellow's clothes were
very bad, but he looked clean and self-reliant.

'I'm only a beginner,' gasped the blushing Harker, 'I didn't think
anybody could hear me.'

'Well, I like that!' returned the other. 'You're a pretty old beginner.
Come, I'll give you a lead myself. Give us a seat here beside you.'

The next moment the military gentleman was perched on the cart, pipe in
hand. He gave the instrument a knowing rattle on the shaft, mouthed it,
appeared to commune for a moment with the muse, and dashed into 'The
girl I left behind me'. He was a great, rather than a fine, performer;
he lacked the bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all
the honey out of 'Cherry Ripe'; he did not fear--he even ostentatiously
displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but
in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of
jimmy--a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on
the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of
the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal)
eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow
stood without a rival. Harker listened: 'The girl I left behind me'
filled him with despair; 'The Soldier's Joy' carried him beyond jealousy
into generous enthusiasm.

'Turn about,' said the military gentleman, offering the pipe.

'O, not after you!' cried Harker; 'you're a professional.'

'No,' said his companion; 'an amatyure like yourself. That's one style
of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was
a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you're my age you'll
play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does
it go?' and he affected to endeavour to recall 'The Ploughboy'.

A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker. Was it possible?
Was there something in his playing? It had, indeed, seemed to him at
times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it. Was he a genius?
Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.

'No,' said the unhappy Harker, 'that's not quite it. It goes this
way--just to show you.'

And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom. When he had
played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military
gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became
clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a
lesson to this full-grown flutist--and the flutist under his care was
not very brilliantly progressing--how am I to tell what floods of glory
brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an
amateur himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which
the carrier climbed? One significant fact shall paint the situation:
thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman
listened and approved.

As he listened, however, he did not forget the habit of soldierly
precaution, looking both behind and before. He looked behind and
computed the value of the carrier's load, divining the contents of the
brown-paper parcels and the portly hamper, and briefly setting down the
grand piano in the brand-new piano-case as 'difficult to get rid of'.
He looked before, and spied at the corner of the green lane a little
country public-house embowered in roses. 'I'll have a shy at it,'
concluded the military gentleman, and roundly proposed a glass. 'Well,
I'm not a drinking man,' said Harker.

'Look here, now,' cut in the other, 'I'll tell you who I am: I'm
Colour-Sergeant Brand of the Blankth. That'll tell you if I'm a drinking
man or not.' It might and it might not, thus a Greek chorus would have
intervened, and gone on to point out how very far it fell short of
telling why the sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even
to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for
the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention
to oakum. But there was no Greek chorus present; and the man of war went
on to contend that drinking was one thing and a friendly glass another.

In the Blue Lion, which was the name of the country public-house,
Colour-Sergeant Brand introduced his new friend, Mr Harker, to a
number of ingenious mixtures, calculated to prevent the approaches of
intoxication. These he explained to be 'rekisite' in the service, so
that a self-respecting officer should always appear upon parade in a
condition honourable to his corps. The most efficacious of these devices
was to lace a pint of mild ate with twopenceworth of London gin. I am
pleased to hand in this recipe to the discerning reader, who may find
it useful even in civil station; for its effect upon Mr Harker was
revolutionary. He must be helped on board his own waggon, where he
proceeded to display a spirit entirely given over to mirth and music,
alternately hooting with laughter, to which the sergeant hastened to
bear chorus, and incoherently tootling on the pipe. The man of war,
meantime, unostentatiously possessed himself of the reins. It was plain
he had a taste for the secluded beauties of an English landscape; for
the cart, although it wandered under his guidance for some time, was
never observed to issue on the dusty highway, journeying between hedge
and ditch, and for the most part under overhanging boughs. It was plain,
besides, he had an eye to the true interests of Mr Harker; for though
the cart drew up more than once at the doors of public-houses, it was
only the sergeant who set foot to ground, and, being equipped himself
with a quart bottle, once more proceeded on his rural drive.

To give any idea of the complexity of the sergeant's course, a map of
that part of Middlesex would be required, and my publisher is averse
from the expense. Suffice it, that a little after the night had closed,
the cart was brought to a standstill in a woody road; where the sergeant
lifted from among the parcels, and tenderly deposited upon the wayside,
the inanimate form of Harker.

'If you come-to before daylight,' thought the sergeant, 'I shall be
surprised for one.'

From the various pockets of the slumbering carrier he gently collected
the sum of seventeen shillings and eightpence sterling; and, getting
once more into the cart, drove thoughtfully away.

'If I was exactly sure of where I was, it would be a good job,' he
reflected. 'Anyway, here's a corner.'

He turned it, and found himself upon the riverside. A little above him
the lights of a houseboat shone cheerfully; and already close at hand,
so close that it was impossible to avoid their notice, three persons, a
lady and two gentlemen, were deliberately drawing near. The sergeant put
his trust in the convenient darkness of the night, and drove on to meet
them. One of the gentlemen, who was of a portly figure, walked in the
midst of the fairway, and presently held up a staff by way of signal.

'My man, have you seen anything of a carrier's cart?' he cried.

Dark as it was, it seemed to the sergeant as though the slimmer of
the two gentlemen had made a motion to prevent the other speaking, and
(finding himself too late) had skipped aside with some alacrity. At
another season, Sergeant Brand would have paid more attention to the
fact; but he was then immersed in the perils of his own predicament.

'A carrier's cart?' said he, with a perceptible uncertainty of voice.
'No, sir.'

'Ah!' said the portly gentleman, and stood aside to let the sergeant
pass. The lady appeared to bend forward and study the cart with every
mark of sharpened curiosity, the slimmer gentleman still keeping in the
rear.

'I wonder what the devil they would be at,' thought Sergeant Brand; and,
looking fearfully back, he saw the trio standing together in the midst
of the way, like folk consulting. The bravest of military heroes are
not always equal to themselves as to their reputation; and fear, on some
singular provocation, will find a lodgment in the most unfamiliar bosom.
The word 'detective' might have been heard to gurgle in the sergeant's
throat; and vigorously applying the whip, he fled up the riverside road
to Great Haverham, at the gallop of the carrier's horse. The lights of
the houseboat flashed upon the flying waggon as it passed; the beat of
hoofs and the rattle of the vehicle gradually coalesced and died away;
and presently, to the trio on the riverside, silence had redescended.

'It's the most extraordinary thing,' cried the slimmer of the two
gentlemen, 'but that's the cart.'

'And I know I saw a piano,' said the girl.

'O, it's the cart, certainly; and the extraordinary thing is, it's not
the man,' added the first.

'It must be the man, Gid, it must be,' said the portly one.

'Well, then, why is he running away?' asked Gideon.

'His horse bolted, I suppose,' said the Squirradical.

'Nonsense! I heard the whip going like a flail,' said Gideon. 'It simply
defies the human reason.'

'I'll tell you,' broke in the girl, 'he came round that corner. Suppose
we went and--what do you call it in books?--followed his trail? There
may be a house there, or somebody who saw him, or something.'

'Well, suppose we did, for the fun of the thing,' said Gideon.

The fun of the thing (it would appear) consisted in the extremely close
juxtaposition of himself and Miss Hazeltine. To Uncle Ned, who was
excluded from these simple pleasures, the excursion appeared hopeless
from the first; and when a fresh perspective of darkness opened up,
dimly contained between park palings on the one side and a hedge and
ditch upon the other, the whole without the smallest signal of human
habitation, the Squirradical drew up.

'This is a wild-goose chase,' said he.

With the cessation of the footfalls, another sound smote upon their
ears.

'O, what's that?' cried Julia.

'I can't think,' said Gideon.

The Squirradical had his stick presented like a sword. 'Gid,' he began,
'Gid, I--'

'O Mr Forsyth!' cried the girl. 'O don't go forward, you don't know what
it might be--it might be something perfectly horrid.'

'It may be the devil itself,' said Gideon, disengaging himself, 'but I
am going to see it.'

'Don't be rash, Gid,' cried his uncle.

The barrister drew near to the sound, which was certainly of a
portentous character. In quality it appeared to blend the strains of
the cow, the fog-horn, and the mosquito; and the startling manner of its
enunciation added incalculably to its terrors. A dark object, not unlike
the human form divine, appeared on the brink of the ditch.

'It's a man,' said Gideon, 'it's only a man; he seems to be asleep and
snoring. Hullo,' he added, a moment after, 'there must be something
wrong with him, he won't waken.'

Gideon produced his vestas, struck one, and by its light recognized the
tow head of Harker.

'This is the man,' said he, 'as drunk as Belial. I see the whole story';
and to his two companions, who had now ventured to rejoin him, he set
forth a theory of the divorce between the carrier and his cart, which
was not unlike the truth.

'Drunken brute!' said Uncle Ned, 'let's get him to a pump and give him
what he deserves.'

'Not at all!' said Gideon. 'It is highly undesirable he should see us
together; and really, do you know, I am very much obliged to him, for
this is about the luckiest thing that could have possibly occurred. It
seems to me--Uncle Ned, I declare to heaven it seems to me--I'm clear of
it!'

'Clear of what?' asked the Squirradical.

'The whole affair!' cried Gideon. 'That man has been ass enough to steal
the cart and the dead body; what he hopes to do with it I neither know
nor care. My hands are free, Jimson ceases; down with Jimson. Shake
hands with me, Uncle Ned--Julia, darling girl, Julia, I--'

'Gideon, Gideon!' said his uncle. 'O, it's all right, uncle, when
we're going to be married so soon,' said Gideon. 'You know you said so
yourself in the houseboat.'

'Did I?' said Uncle Ned; 'I am certain I said no such thing.'

'Appeal to him, tell him he did, get on his soft side,' cried Gideon.
'He's a real brick if you get on his soft side.'

'Dear Mr Bloomfield,' said Julia, 'I know Gideon will be such a very
good boy, and he has promised me to do such a lot of law, and I will
see that he does too. And you know it is so very steadying to young men,
everybody admits that; though, of course, I know I have no money, Mr
Bloomfield,' she added.

'My dear young lady, as this rapscallion told you today on the boat,
Uncle Ned has plenty,' said the Squirradical, 'and I can never forget
that you have been shamefully defrauded. So as there's nobody looking,
you had better give your Uncle Ned a kiss. There, you rogue,' resumed
Mr Bloomfield, when the ceremony had been daintily performed, 'this very
pretty young lady is yours, and a vast deal more than you deserve. But
now, let us get back to the houseboat, get up steam on the launch, and
away back to town.'

'That's the thing!' cried Gideon; 'and tomorrow there will be no
houseboat, and no Jimson, and no carrier's cart, and no piano; and when
Harker awakes on the ditchside, he may tell himself the whole affair has
been a dream.'

'Aha!' said Uncle Ned, 'but there's another man who will have a
different awakening. That fellow in the cart will find he has been too
clever by half.'

'Uncle Ned and Julia,' said Gideon, 'I am as happy as the King of
Tartary, my heart is like a threepenny-bit, my heels are like feathers;
I am out of all my troubles, Julia's hand is in mine. Is this a time
for anything but handsome sentiments? Why, there's not room in me for
anything that's not angelic! And when I think of that poor unhappy devil
in the cart, I stand here in the night and cry with a single heart God
help him!'

'Amen,' said Uncle Ned.



CHAPTER XIII. The Tribulations of Morris: Part the Second

In a really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye
again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of
the day; it presents, besides, features of a high, almost a repulsive,
morality; and if it should prove the means of preventing any respectable
and inexperienced gentleman from plunging light-heartedly into crime,
even political crime, this work will not have been penned in vain.

He rose on the morrow of his night with Michael, rose from the leaden
slumber of distress, to find his hand tremulous, his eyes closed with
rheum, his throat parched, and his digestion obviously paralysed.
'Lord knows it's not from eating!' Morris thought; and as he dressed
he reconsidered his position under several heads. Nothing will so well
depict the troubled seas in which he was now voyaging as a review
of these various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader's
convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human
equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same
obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses;
and it will be observed with pity that every individual item would have
graced and commended the cover of a railway novel.

Anxiety the First: Where is the Body? or, The Mystery of Bent Pitman. It
was now manifestly plain that Bent Pitman (as was to be looked for from
his ominous appellation) belonged to the darker order of the criminal
class. An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would
not have accepted in silence the tragic contents of the water-butt; a
man, who was not already up to the hilts in gore, would have lacked
the means of secretly disposing them. This process of reasoning left a
horrid image of the monster, Pitman. Doubtless he had long ago disposed
of the body--dropping it through a trapdoor in his back kitchen, Morris
supposed, with some hazy recollection of a picture in a penny dreadful;
and doubtless the man now lived in wanton splendour on the proceeds of
the bill. So far, all was peace. But with the profligate habits of a man
like Bent Pitman (who was no doubt a hunchback in the bargain), eight
hundred pounds could be easily melted in a week. When they were gone,
what would he be likely to do next? A hell-like voice in Morris's own
bosom gave the answer: 'Blackmail me.'

Anxiety the Second: The Fraud of the Tontine; or, Is my Uncle dead?
This, on which all Morris's hopes depended, was yet a question. He had
tried to bully Teena; he had tried to bribe her; and nothing came of
it. He had his moral conviction still; but you cannot blackmail a sharp
lawyer on a moral conviction. And besides, since his interview with
Michael, the idea wore a less attractive countenance. Was Michael
the man to be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave
considerations. 'It's not that I'm afraid of him,' Morris so far
condescended to reassure himself; 'but I must be very certain of my
ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to
novels! I wouldn't have even begun this business in a novel, but what
I'd have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who'd have
become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably
broken into Michael's house at night and found nothing but a waxwork
image; and then blackmailed or murdered me. But here, in real life, I
might walk the streets till I dropped dead, and none of the criminal
classes would look near me. Though, to be sure, there is always Pitman,'
he added thoughtfully.

Anxiety the Third: The Cottage at Browndean; or, The Underpaid
Accomplice. For he had an accomplice, and that accomplice was blooming
unseen in a damp cottage in Hampshire with empty pockets. What could be
done about that? He really ought to have sent him something; if it was
only a post-office order for five bob, enough to prove that he was kept
in mind, enough to keep him in hope, beer, and tobacco. 'But what
would you have?' thought Morris; and ruefully poured into his hand
a half-crown, a florin, and eightpence in small change. For a man in
Morris's position, at war with all society, and conducting, with the
hand of inexperience, a widely ramified intrigue, the sum was already a
derision. John would have to be doing; no mistake of that. 'But then,'
asked the hell-like voice, 'how long is John likely to stand it?'

Anxiety the Fourth: The Leather Business; or, The Shutters at Last: a
Tale of the City. On this head Morris had no news. He had not yet dared
to visit the family concern; yet he knew he must delay no longer, and
if anything had been wanted to sharpen this conviction, Michael's
references of the night before rang ambiguously in his ear. Well and
good. To visit the city might be indispensable; but what was he to do
when he was there? He had no right to sign in his own name; and, with
all the will in the world, he seemed to lack the art of signing with
his uncle's. Under these circumstances, Morris could do nothing to
procrastinate the crash; and, when it came, when prying eyes began to be
applied to every joint of his behaviour, two questions could not fail to
be addressed, sooner or later, to a speechless and perspiring insolvent.
Where is Mr Joseph Finsbury? and how about your visit to the bank?
Questions, how easy to put!--ye gods, how impossible to answer! The man
to whom they should be addressed went certainly to gaol, and--eh! what
was this?--possibly to the gallows. Morris was trying to shave when this
idea struck him, and he laid the razor down. Here (in Michael's words)
was the total disappearance of a valuable uncle; here was a time of
inexplicable conduct on the part of a nephew who had been in bad
blood with the old man any time these seven years; what a chance for a
judicial blunder! 'But no,' thought Morris, 'they cannot, they dare not,
make it murder. Not that. But honestly, and speaking as a man to a man,
I don't see any other crime in the calendar (except arson) that I don't
seem somehow to have committed. And yet I'm a perfectly respectable man,
and wished nothing but my due. Law is a pretty business.'

With this conclusion firmly seated in his mind, Morris Finsbury
descended to the hall of the house in John Street, still half-shaven.
There was a letter in the box; he knew the handwriting: John at last!

'Well, I think I might have been spared this,' he said bitterly, and
tore it open.

Dear Morris [it ran], what the dickens do you mean by it? I'm in an
awful hole down here; I have to go on tick, and the parties on the spot
don't cotton to the idea; they couldn't, because it is so plain I'm in a
stait of Destitution. I've got no bedclothes, think of that, I must have
coins, the hole thing's a Mockry, I wont stand it, nobody would. I would
have come away before, only I have no money for the railway fare. Don't
be a lunatic, Morris, you don't seem to understand my dredful situation.
I have to get the stamp on tick. A fact.

--Ever your affte. Brother,

J. FINSBURY

'Can't even spell!' Morris reflected, as he crammed the letter in his
pocket, and left the house. 'What can I do for him? I have to go to the
expense of a barber, I'm so shattered! How can I send anybody coins?
It's hard lines, I daresay; but does he think I'm living on hot muffins?
One comfort,' was his grim reflection, 'he can't cut and run--he's got
to stay; he's as helpless as the dead.' And then he broke forth again:
'Complains, does he? and he's never even heard of Bent Pitman! If he had
what I have on my mind, he might complain with a good grace.'

But these were not honest arguments, or not wholly honest; there was a
struggle in the mind of Morris; he could not disguise from himself that
his brother John was miserably situated at Browndean, without news,
without money, without bedclothes, without society or any entertainment;
and by the time he had been shaved and picked a hasty breakfast at a
coffee tavern, Morris had arrived at a compromise.

'Poor Johnny,' he said to himself, 'he's in an awful box! I can't
send him coins, but I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll send him the Pink
Un--it'll cheer John up; and besides, it'll do his credit good getting
anything by post.'

Accordingly, on his way to the leather business, whither he proceeded
(according to his thrifty habit) on foot, Morris purchased and
dispatched a single copy of that enlivening periodical, to which (in
a sudden pang of remorse) he added at random the Athenaeum, the
Revivalist, and the Penny Pictorial Weekly. So there was John set up
with literature, and Morris had laid balm upon his conscience.

As if to reward him, he was received in his place of business with good
news. Orders were pouring in; there was a run on some of the back stock,
and the figure had gone up. Even the manager appeared elated. As for
Morris, who had almost forgotten the meaning of good news, he longed to
sob like a little child; he could have caught the manager (a pallid
man with startled eyebrows) to his bosom; he could have found it in
his generosity to give a cheque (for a small sum) to every clerk in
the counting-house. As he sat and opened his letters a chorus of airy
vocalists sang in his brain, to most exquisite music, 'This whole
concern may be profitable yet, profitable yet, profitable yet.'

To him, in this sunny moment of relief, enter a Mr Rodgerson, a
creditor, but not one who was expected to be pressing, for his
connection with the firm was old and regular.

'O, Finsbury,' said he, not without embarrassment, 'it's of course only
fair to let you know--the fact is, money is a trifle tight--I have some
paper out--for that matter, every one's complaining--and in short--'

'It has never been our habit, Rodgerson,' said Morris, turning pale.
'But give me time to turn round, and I'll see what I can do; I daresay
we can let you have something to account.'

'Well, that's just where is,' replied Rodgerson. 'I was tempted; I've
let the credit out of MY hands.'

'Out of your hands?' repeated Morris. 'That's playing rather fast and
loose with us, Mr Rodgerson.'

'Well, I got cent. for cent. for it,' said the other, 'on the nail, in a
certified cheque.'

'Cent. for cent.!' cried Morris. 'Why, that's something like thirty per
cent. bonus; a singular thing! Who's the party?'

'Don't know the man,' was the reply. 'Name of Moss.'

'A Jew,' Morris reflected, when his visitor was gone. And what could a
Jew want with a claim of--he verified the amount in the books--a claim
of three five eight, nineteen, ten, against the house of Finsbury? And
why should he pay cent. for cent.? The figure proved the loyalty of
Rodgerson--even Morris admitted that. But it proved unfortunately
something else--the eagerness of Moss. The claim must have been wanted
instantly, for that day, for that morning even. Why? The mystery of Moss
promised to be a fit pendant to the mystery of Pitman. 'And just when
all was looking well too!' cried Morris, smiting his hand upon the desk.
And almost at the same moment Mr Moss was announced.

Mr Moss was a radiant Hebrew, brutally handsome, and offensively polite.
He was acting, it appeared, for a third party; he understood nothing of
the circumstances; his client desired to have his position regularized;
but he would accept an antedated cheque--antedated by two months, if Mr
Finsbury chose.

'But I don't understand this,' said Morris. 'What made you pay cent. per
cent. for it today?'

Mr Moss had no idea; only his orders.

'The whole thing is thoroughly irregular,' said Morris. 'It is not the
custom of the trade to settle at this time of the year. What are your
instructions if I refuse?'

'I am to see Mr Joseph Finsbury, the head of the firm,' said Mr Moss.
'I was directed to insist on that; it was implied you had no status
here--the expressions are not mine.'

'You cannot see Mr Joseph; he is unwell,' said Morris.

'In that case I was to place the matter in the hands of a lawyer. Let
me see,' said Mr Moss, opening a pocket-book with, perhaps, suspicious
care, at the right place--'Yes--of Mr Michael Finsbury. A relation,
perhaps? In that case, I presume, the matter will be pleasantly
arranged.'

To pass into the hands of Michael was too much for Morris. He struck his
colours. A cheque at two months was nothing, after all. In two months
he would probably be dead, or in a gaol at any rate. He bade the manager
give Mr Moss a chair and the paper. 'I'm going over to get a cheque
signed by Mr Finsbury,' said he, 'who is lying ill at John Street.'

A cab there and a cab back; here were inroads on his wretched capital!
He counted the cost; when he was done with Mr Moss he would be left with
twelvepence-halfpenny in the world. What was even worse, he had now been
forced to bring his uncle up to Bloomsbury. 'No use for poor Johnny
in Hampshire now,' he reflected. 'And how the farce is to be kept up
completely passes me. At Browndean it was just possible; in Bloomsbury
it seems beyond human ingenuity--though I suppose it's what Michael
does. But then he has accomplices--that Scotsman and the whole gang. Ah,
if I had accomplices!'

Necessity is the mother of the arts. Under a spur so immediate, Morris
surprised himself by the neatness and dispatch of his new forgery, and
within three-fourths of an hour had handed it to Mr Moss.

'That is very satisfactory,' observed that gentleman, rising. 'I was to
tell you it will not be presented, but you had better take care.'

The room swam round Morris. 'What--what's that?' he cried, grasping the
table. He was miserably conscious the next moment of his shrill tongue
and ashen face. 'What do you mean--it will not be presented? Why am I to
take care? What is all this mummery?'

'I have no idea, Mr Finsbury,' replied the smiling Hebrew. 'It was a
message I was to deliver. The expressions were put into my mouth.'

'What is your client's name?' asked Morris.

'That is a secret for the moment,' answered Mr Moss. Morris bent toward
him. 'It's not the bank?' he asked hoarsely.

'I have no authority to say more, Mr Finsbury,' returned Mr Moss. 'I
will wish you a good morning, if you please.'

'Wish me a good morning!' thought Morris; and the next moment, seizing
his hat, he fled from his place of business like a madman. Three streets
away he stopped and groaned. 'Lord! I should have borrowed from the
manager!' he cried. 'But it's too late now; it would look dicky to go
back; I'm penniless--simply penniless--like the unemployed.'

He went home and sat in the dismantled dining-room with his head in his
hands. Newton never thought harder than this victim of circumstances,
and yet no clearness came. 'It may be a defect in my intelligence,' he
cried, rising to his feet, 'but I cannot see that I am fairly used. The
bad luck I've had is a thing to write to The Times about; it's enough to
breed a revolution. And the plain English of the whole thing is that I
must have money at once. I'm done with all morality now; I'm long past
that stage; money I must have, and the only chance I see is Bent Pitman.
Bent Pitman is a criminal, and therefore his position's weak. He must
have some of that eight hundred left; if he has I'll force him to go
shares; and even if he hasn't, I'll tell him the tontine affair, and
with a desperate man like Pitman at my back, it'll be strange if I don't
succeed.'

Well and good. But how to lay hands upon Bent Pitman, except by
advertisement, was not so clear. And even so, in what terms to ask a
meeting? on what grounds? and where? Not at John Street, for it would
never do to let a man like Bent Pitman know your real address; nor yet
at Pitman's house, some dreadful place in Holloway, with a trapdoor
in the back kitchen; a house which you might enter in a light summer
overcoat and varnished boots, to come forth again piecemeal in a
market-basket. That was the drawback of a really efficient accomplice,
Morris felt, not without a shudder. 'I never dreamed I should come to
actually covet such society,' he thought. And then a brilliant idea
struck him. Waterloo Station, a public place, yet at certain hours of
the day a solitary; a place, besides, the very name of which must knock
upon the heart of Pitman, and at once suggest a knowledge of the latest
of his guilty secrets. Morris took a piece of paper and sketched his
advertisement.


WILLIAM BENT PITMAN, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of
SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE on the far end of the main line departure
platform, Waterloo Station, 2 to 4 P.M., Sunday next.

Morris reperused this literary trifle with approbation. 'Terse,' he
reflected. 'Something to his advantage is not strictly true; but it's
taking and original, and a man is not on oath in an advertisement.
All that I require now is the ready cash for my own meals and for the
advertisement, and--no, I can't lavish money upon John, but I'll give
him some more papers. How to raise the wind?'

He approached his cabinet of signets, and the collector suddenly
revolted in his blood. 'I will not!' he cried; 'nothing shall induce me
to massacre my collection--rather theft!' And dashing upstairs to the
drawing-room, he helped himself to a few of his uncle's curiosities:
a pair of Turkish babooshes, a Smyrna fan, a water-cooler, a musket
guaranteed to have been seized from an Ephesian bandit, and a pocketful
of curious but incomplete seashells.



CHAPTER XIV. William Bent Pitman Hears of Something to his Advantage

On the morning of Sunday, William Dent Pitman rose at his usual hour,
although with something more than the usual reluctance. The day before
(it should be explained) an addition had been made to his family in the
person of a lodger. Michael Finsbury had acted sponsor in the business,
and guaranteed the weekly bill; on the other hand, no doubt with a spice
of his prevailing jocularity, he had drawn a depressing portrait of the
lodger's character. Mr Pitman had been led to understand his guest was
not good company; he had approached the gentleman with fear, and had
rejoiced to find himself the entertainer of an angel. At tea he had been
vastly pleased; till hard on one in the morning he had sat entranced by
eloquence and progressively fortified with information in the studio;
and now, as he reviewed over his toilet the harmless pleasures of
the evening, the future smiled upon him with revived attractions. 'Mr
Finsbury is indeed an acquisition,' he remarked to himself; and as
he entered the little parlour, where the table was already laid for
breakfast, the cordiality of his greeting would have befitted an
acquaintanceship already old.

'I am delighted to see you, sir'--these were his expressions--'and I
trust you have slept well.'

'Accustomed as I have been for so long to a life of almost perpetual
change,' replied the guest, 'the disturbance so often complained of by
the more sedentary, as attending their first night in (what is called) a
new bed, is a complaint from which I am entirely free.'

'I am delighted to hear it,' said the drawing-master warmly. 'But I see
I have interrupted you over the paper.'

'The Sunday paper is one of the features of the age,' said Mr Finsbury.
'In America, I am told, it supersedes all other literature, the bone and
sinew of the nation finding their requirements catered for; hundreds of
columns will be occupied with interesting details of the world's
doings, such as water-spouts, elopements, conflagrations, and public
entertainments; there is a corner for politics, ladies' work, chess,
religion, and even literature; and a few spicy editorials serve to
direct the course of public thought. It is difficult to estimate the
part played by such enormous and miscellaneous repositories in the
education of the people. But this (though interesting in itself)
partakes of the nature of a digression; and what I was about to ask you
was this: Are you yourself a student of the daily press?'

'There is not much in the papers to interest an artist,' returned
Pitman.

'In that case,' resumed Joseph, 'an advertisement which has appeared
the last two days in various journals, and reappears this morning,
may possibly have failed to catch your eye. The name, with a trifling
variation, bears a strong resemblance to your own. Ah, here it is. If
you please, I will read it to you:

WILIAM BENT PITMAN, if this should meet the eye of, he will hear of
SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE at the far end of the main line departure
platform, Waterloo Station, 2 to 4 P.M. today.

'Is that in print?' cried Pitman. 'Let me see it! Bent? It must be Dent!
SOMETHING TO MY ADVANTAGE? Mr Finsbury, excuse me offering a word of
caution; I am aware how strangely this must sound in your ears, but
there are domestic reasons why this little circumstance might perhaps
be better kept between ourselves. Mrs Pitman--my dear Sir, I assure you
there is nothing dishonourable in my secrecy; the reasons are domestic,
merely domestic; and I may set your conscience at rest when I assure
you all the circumstances are known to our common friend, your excellent
nephew, Mr Michael, who has not withdrawn from me his esteem.'

'A word is enough, Mr Pitman,' said Joseph, with one of his Oriental
reverences.

Half an hour later, the drawing-master found Michael in bed and reading
a book, the picture of good-humour and repose.

'Hillo, Pitman,' he said, laying down his book, 'what brings you here at
this inclement hour? Ought to be in church, my boy!'

'I have little thought of church today, Mr Finsbury,' said the
drawing-master. 'I am on the brink of something new, Sir.' And he
presented the advertisement.

'Why, what is this?' cried Michael, sitting suddenly up. He studied
it for half a minute with a frown. 'Pitman, I don't care about this
document a particle,' said he.

'It will have to be attended to, however,' said Pitman.

'I thought you'd had enough of Waterloo,' returned the lawyer. 'Have you
started a morbid craving? You've never been yourself anyway since you
lost that beard. I believe now it was where you kept your senses.'

'Mr Finsbury,' said the drawing-master, 'I have tried to reason this
matter out, and, with your permission, I should like to lay before you
the results.'

'Fire away,' said Michael; 'but please, Pitman, remember it's Sunday,
and let's have no bad language.'

'There are three views open to us,' began Pitman. 'First this may
be connected with the barrel; second, it may be connected with Mr
Semitopolis's statue; and third, it may be from my wife's brother, who
went to Australia. In the first case, which is of course possible, I
confess the matter would be best allowed to drop.'

'The court is with you there, Brother Pitman,' said Michael.

'In the second,' continued the other, 'it is plainly my duty to leave no
stone unturned for the recovery of the lost antique.'

'My dear fellow, Semitopolis has come down like a trump; he has pocketed
the loss and left you the profit. What more would you have?' enquired
the lawyer.

'I conceive, sir, under correction, that Mr Semitopolis's generosity
binds me to even greater exertion,' said the drawing-master. 'The whole
business was unfortunate; it was--I need not disguise it from you--it
was illegal from the first: the more reason that I should try to behave
like a gentleman,' concluded Pitman, flushing.

'I have nothing to say to that,' returned the lawyer. 'I have sometimes
thought I should like to try to behave like a gentleman myself; only
it's such a one-sided business, with the world and the legal profession
as they are.'

'Then, in the third,' resumed the drawing-master, 'if it's Uncle Tim, of
course, our fortune's made.'

'It's not Uncle Tim, though,' said the lawyer.

'Have you observed that very remarkable expression: SOMETHING TO HIS
ADVANTAGE?' enquired Pitman shrewdly.

'You innocent mutton,' said Michael, 'it's the seediest commonplace in
the English language, and only proves the advertiser is an ass. Let me
demolish your house of cards for you at once. Would Uncle Tim make
that blunder in your name?--in itself, the blunder is delicious, a huge
improvement on the gross reality, and I mean to adopt it in the future;
but is it like Uncle Tim?'

'No, it's not like him,' Pitman admitted. 'But his mind may have become
unhinged at Ballarat.'

'If you come to that, Pitman,' said Michael, 'the advertiser may be
Queen Victoria, fired with the desire to make a duke of you. I put it
to yourself if that's probable; and yet it's not against the laws of
nature. But we sit here to consider probabilities; and with your genteel
permission, I eliminate her Majesty and Uncle Tim on the threshold. To
proceed, we have your second idea, that this has some connection with
the statue. Possible; but in that case who is the advertiser? Not
Ricardi, for he knows your address; not the person who got the box, for
he doesn't know your name. The vanman, I hear you suggest, in a lucid
interval. He might have got your name, and got it incorrectly, at the
station; and he might have failed to get your address. I grant the
vanman. But a question: Do you really wish to meet the vanman?'

'Why should I not?' asked Pitman.

'If he wants to meet you,' replied Michael, 'observe this: it is because
he has found his address-book, has been to the house that got the
statue, and-mark my words!--is moving at the instigation of the
murderer.'

'I should be very sorry to think so,' said Pitman; 'but I still consider
it my duty to Mr Sernitopolis. . .'

'Pitman,' interrupted Michael, 'this will not do. Don't seek to impose
on your legal adviser; don't try to pass yourself off for the Duke of
Wellington, for that is not your line. Come, I wager a dinner I can read
your thoughts. You still believe it's Uncle Tim.'

'Mr Finsbury,' said the drawing-master, colouring, 'you are not a man in
narrow circumstances, and you have no family. Guendolen is growing up,
a very promising girl--she was confirmed this year; and I think you will
be able to enter into my feelings as a parent when I tell you she is
quite ignorant of dancing. The boys are at the board school, which is
all very well in its way; at least, I am the last man in the world to
criticize the institutions of my native land. But I had fondly hoped
that Harold might become a professional musician; and little Otho
shows a quite remarkable vocation for the Church. I am not exactly an
ambitious man...'

'Well, well,' interrupted Michael. 'Be explicit; you think it's Uncle
Tim?'

'It might be Uncle Tim,' insisted Pitman, 'and if it were, and I
neglected the occasion, how could I ever took my children in the face? I
do not refer to Mrs Pitman. . .'

'No, you never do,' said Michael.

'. . . but in the case of her own brother returning from Ballarat. . .'
continued Pitman.

'. . . with his mind unhinged,' put in the lawyer.

'. . . returning from Ballarat with a large fortune, her impatience may
be more easily imagined than described,' concluded Pitman.

'All right,' said Michael, 'be it so. And what do you propose to do?'

'I am going to Waterloo,' said Pitman, 'in disguise.'

'All by your little self?' enquired the lawyer. 'Well, I hope you think
it safe. Mind and send me word from the police cells.'

'O, Mr Finsbury, I had ventured to hope--perhaps you might be induced
to--to make one of us,' faltered Pitman.

'Disguise myself on Sunday?' cried Michael. 'How little you understand
my principles!'

'Mr Finsbury, I have no means of showing you my gratitude; but let me
ask you one question,' said Pitman. 'If I were a very rich client, would
you not take the risk?'

'Diamond, Diamond, you know not what you do!' cried Michael. 'Why, man,
do you suppose I make a practice of cutting about London with my clients
in disguise? Do you suppose money would induce me to touch this business
with a stick? I give you my word of honour, it would not. But I own I
have a real curiosity to see how you conduct this interview--that tempts
me; it tempts me, Pitman, more than gold--it should be exquisitely
rich.' And suddenly Michael laughed. 'Well, Pitman,' said he, 'have all
the truck ready in the studio. I'll go.'

About twenty minutes after two, on this eventful day, the vast and
gloomy shed of Waterloo lay, like the temple of a dead religion, silent
and deserted. Here and there at one of the platforms, a train lay
becalmed; here and there a wandering footfall echoed; the cab-horses
outside stamped with startling reverberations on the stones; or from the
neighbouring wilderness of railway an engine snorted forth a whistle.
The main-line departure platform slumbered like the rest; the
booking-hutches closed; the backs of Mr Haggard's novels, with which
upon a weekday the bookstall shines emblazoned, discreetly hidden behind
dingy shutters; the rare officials, undisguisedly somnambulant; and the
customary loiterers, even to the middle-aged woman with the ulster and
the handbag, fled to more congenial scenes. As in the inmost dells of
some small tropic island the throbbing of the ocean lingers, so here a
faint pervading hum and trepidation told in every corner of surrounding
London.

At the hour already named, persons acquainted with John Dickson, of
Ballarat, and Ezra Thomas, of the United States of America, would have
been cheered to behold them enter through the booking-office.

'What names are we to take?' enquired the latter, anxiously adjusting
the window-glass spectacles which he had been suffered on this occasion
to assume.

'There's no choice for you, my boy,' returned Michael. 'Bent Pitman
or nothing. As for me, I think I look as if I might be called Appleby;
something agreeably old-world about Appleby--breathes of Devonshire
cider. Talking of which, suppose you wet your whistle? the interview is
likely to be trying.'

'I think I'll wait till afterwards,' returned Pitman; 'on the whole, I
think I'll wait till the thing's over. I don't know if it strikes you
as it does me; but the place seems deserted and silent, Mr Finsbury, and
filled with very singular echoes.'

'Kind of Jack-in-the-box feeling?' enquired Michael, 'as if all these
empty trains might be filled with policemen waiting for a signal? and
Sir Charles Warren perched among the girders with a silver whistle to
his lips? It's guilt, Pitman.'

In this uneasy frame of mind they walked nearly the whole length of
the departure platform, and at the western extremity became aware of a
slender figure standing back against a pillar. The figure was plainly
sunk into a deep abstraction; he was not aware of their approach, but
gazed far abroad over the sunlit station. Michael stopped.

'Holloa!' said he, 'can that be your advertiser? If so, I'm done with
it.' And then, on second thoughts: 'Not so, either,' he resumed more
cheerfully. 'Here, turn your back a moment. So. Give me the specs.'

'But you agreed I was to have them,' protested Pitman.

'Ah, but that man knows me,' said Michael.

'Does he? what's his name?' cried Pitman.

'O, he took me into his confidence,' returned the lawyer. 'But I may say
one thing: if he's your advertiser (and he may be, for he seems to
have been seized with criminal lunacy) you can go ahead with a clear
conscience, for I hold him in the hollow of my hand.'

The change effected, and Pitman comforted with this good news, the pair
drew near to Morris.

'Are you looking for Mr William Bent Pitman?' enquired the
drawing-master. 'I am he.'

Morris raised his head. He saw before him, in the speaker, a person
of almost indescribable insignificance, in white spats and a shirt cut
indecently low. A little behind, a second and more burly figure
offered little to criticism, except ulster, whiskers, spectacles,
and deerstalker hat. Since he had decided to call up devils from the
underworld of London, Morris had pondered deeply on the probabilities
of their appearance. His first emotion, like that of Charoba when she
beheld the sea, was one of disappointment; his second did more justice
to the case. Never before had he seen a couple dressed like these; he
had struck a new stratum.

'I must speak with you alone,' said he.

'You need not mind Mr Appleby,' returned Pitman. 'He knows all.'

'All? Do you know what I am here to speak of?' enquired Morris--. 'The
barrel.'

Pitman turned pale, but it was with manly indignation. 'You are the
man!' he cried. 'You very wicked person.'

'Am I to speak before him?' asked Morris, disregarding these severe
expressions.

'He has been present throughout,' said Pitman. 'He opened the barrel;
your guilty secret is already known to him, as well as to your Maker and
myself.'

'Well, then,' said Morris, 'what have you done with the money?'

'I know nothing about any money,' said Pitman.

'You needn't try that on,' said Morris. 'I have tracked you down; you
came to the station sacrilegiously disguised as a clergyman, procured my
barrel, opened it, rifled the body, and cashed the bill. I have been to
the bank, I tell you! I have followed you step by step, and your denials
are childish and absurd.'

'Come, come, Morris, keep your temper,' said Mr Appleby.

'Michael!' cried Morris, 'Michael here too!'

'Here too,' echoed the lawyer; 'here and everywhere, my good fellow;
every step you take is counted; trained detectives follow you like your
shadow; they report to me every three-quarters of an hour; no expense is
spared.'

Morris's face took on a hue of dirty grey. 'Well, I don't care; I have
the less reserve to keep,' he cried. 'That man cashed my bill; it's a
theft, and I want the money back.'

'Do you think I would lie to you, Morris?' asked Michael.

'I don't know,' said his cousin. 'I want my money.'

'It was I alone who touched the body,' began Michael.

'You? Michael!' cried Morris, starting back. 'Then why haven't you
declared the death?' 'What the devil do you mean?' asked Michael.

'Am I mad? or are you?' cried Morris.

'I think it must be Pitman,' said Michael.

The three men stared at each other, wild-eyed.

'This is dreadful,' said Morris, 'dreadful. I do not understand one word
that is addressed to me.'

'I give you my word of honour, no more do I,' said Michael.

'And in God's name, why whiskers?' cried Morris, pointing in a ghastly
manner at his cousin. 'Does my brain reel? How whiskers?'

'O, that's a matter of detail,' said Michael.

There was another silence, during which Morris appeared to himself to
be shot in a trapeze as high as St Paul's, and as low as Baker Street
Station.

'Let us recapitulate,' said Michael, 'unless it's really a dream, in
which case I wish Teena would call me for breakfast. My friend Pitman,
here, received a barrel which, it now appears, was meant for you. The
barrel contained the body of a man. How or why you killed him...'

'I never laid a hand on him,' protested Morris. 'This is what I have
dreaded all along. But think, Michael! I'm not that kind of man; with
all my faults, I wouldn't touch a hair of anybody's head, and it was all
dead loss to me. He got killed in that vile accident.'

Suddenly Michael was seized by mirth so prolonged and excessive that his
companions supposed beyond a doubt his reason had deserted him. Again
and again he struggled to compose himself, and again and again laughter
overwhelmed him like a tide. In all this maddening interview there had
been no more spectral feature than this of Michael's merriment; and
Pitman and Morris, drawn together by the common fear, exchanged glances
of anxiety.

'Morris,' gasped the lawyer, when he was at last able to articulate,
'hold on, I see it all now. I can make it clear in one word. Here's the
key: I NEVER GUESSED IT WAS UNCLE JOSEPH TILL THIS MOMENT.'

This remark produced an instant lightening of the tension for Morris.
For Pitman it quenched the last ray of hope and daylight. Uncle Joseph,
whom he had left an hour ago in Norfolk Street, pasting newspaper
cuttings?--it?--the dead body?--then who was he, Pitman? and was this
Waterloo Station or Colney Hatch?