Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  The Cherokees meanwhile express their sentiments pretty freely about Monsieur Raymond de Marolles, and discuss divers schemes for the bringing of him to justice. Splitters, whose experiences as a dramatic writer suggested to him every possible kind of mode but a natural one, proposed that Richard should wait upon the Count, when convenient, at the hour of midnight, disguised as his uncle’s ghost, and confound the villain in the stronghold of his crime — meaning Park Lane. This sentence was verbatim from a playbill, as well as the whole very available idea; Mr. Splitters’s notions of justice being entirely confined to the retributive or poetical, in the person of a gentleman with a very long speech and two pistols.

  “The Smasher’s outside,” said Percy Cordonner. “He wants to have a look at our friend as he goes out, that he may reckon him up. You’d better let him go into the Count’s peepers with his left, Dick, and damage his beauty; it’s the best chance you’ll get.”

  “No, no; I tell you, Percy, that man shall stand where I stood. That man shall drink to the dregs the cup I drank, when I stood in the criminal dock at Slopperton and saw every eye turned towards me with execration and horror, and knew that my innocence was of no avail to sustain me in the good opinion of one creature who had known me from my very boyhood.”

  “Except the ‘Cheerfuls,’” said Percy. “Don’t forget the ‘Cheerfuls.’”

  “When I do, I shall have forgotten all on this side of the grave, you may depend, Percy. No; I have some firm friends on earth, and here is one;” and he laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Peters, who still stood at his elbow.

  The opera was concluded, and the Count de Marolles and his lovely wife rose to leave their box. Richard, Percy, Splitters, two or three more of the Cherokees, and Mr. Peters left the pit at the same time, and contrived to be at the box-entrance before Raymond’s party came out.

  At last the Count de Marolles’ carriage was called; and of it drew up, Raymond descended the steps with his wife on his arm, her little boy clinging to her left hand.

  “She’s a splendid creature,” said Percy; “but there’s a spice of devilry in those glorious dark eyes. I wouldn’t be her husband for a trifle, if I happened to offend her.”

  As the Count and Countess crossed from the doors of the opera-house to their carriage, a drunken man came reeling past, and before the servants or policemen standing by could interfere, stumbled against Raymond de Marolles, and in so doing knocked his hat off. He picked it up immediately, and, muttering some unintelligible apology, returned it to Raymond, looking, as he did so, very steadily in the face of M. de Marolles. The occurrence did not occupy a moment, and the Count was too finished a gentleman to make any disturbance. This man was the Smasher.

  As the carriage drove off, he joined the group under the colonnade, perfectly sober by this time.

  “I’ve had a jolly good look at him, Mr. Marwood,” he said, “and I’d swear to him after forty rounds in the ring, which is apt sometimes to take a little of the Cupid out of a gent. He’s not a bad-looking cove on the whole, and looks game. He’s rather slight built, but he might make that up in science, and dance a pretty tidy quadrille round the chap he was put up agin, bein’ active and lissom. I see the cut upon his forehead, Mr. Peters, as you told me to take notice of,” he said, addressing the detective. “He didn’t get that in a fair stand-up fight, leastways not from an Englishman. When you cross the water for your antagonist, you don’t know what you may get.”

  “He got it from an Englishwoman, though,” said Richard.

  “Did he, now? Ah, that’s the worst of the softer sect; you see, sir, you never know where they’ll have you. They’re awful deficient in science, to be sure; but, Lord bless you, they make it up with the will,” and the Left-handed one rubbed his nose. He had been married during his early career, and was in the habit of saying that ten rounds inside the ropes was a trifle compared with one round in your own back-parlour, when your missus had got your knowledge-box in chancery against the corner of the mantelpiece, and was marking a dozen different editions of the ten commandments on your complexion with her bunch of fives.

  “Come, gentlemen,” said the hospitable Smasher, “what do you say to a Welsh rarebit and a bottle of bitter at my place? We’re as full as we can hold down stairs, for the Finsbury Fizzer’s trainer has come up from Newmarket; and his backers is hearin’ anecdotes of his doings for the last interesting week. They talk of dropping down the river on Tuesday for the great event between him and the Atlantic Alligator, and the excitement’s tremenjous; our barmaid’s hands is blistered with working at the engines. So come round and see the game, gentlemen; and if you’ve any loose cash you’d like to put upon the Fizzer I can get you decent odds, considerin’ he’s the favourite.”

  Richard shook his head. He would go home to his mother, be said; he wanted to talk to Peters about the day’s work. He shook hands heartily with his friends, and as they strolled off to the Smasher’s, walked with them as far as Charing Cross, and left them at the corner that led into quiet Spring Gardens.

  In the club-room of the Cherokees that night the members renewed the oath they had taken on the night of Richard’s arrival, and formally inaugurated themselves as “Daredevil Dick’s secret police.”

  CHAPTER IV. THE CAPTAIN, THE CHEMIST, AND THE LASCAR.

  IN the drawing-room of a house in a small street leading out of Regent Street are assembled, the morning after this opera-house recontre, three people. It is almost difficult to imagine three persons more dissimilar than those who compose this little group. On a sofa near the open window, at which the autumn breeze comes blowing in over boxes of dusty London flowers, reclines a gentleman, whose bronzed and bearded face, and the military style even of the loose morning undress which he wears, proclaim him to be a soldier. A very handsome face it is, this soldier’s, although darkened not a little by a tropical sun, and a good deal shrouded by the thick black moustache and beard which conceal the expression of the mouth, and detract from the individuality of the face. He is smoking a long cherry-stemmed pipe, the bowl of which rests on the floor. A short distance from the sofa on which he is lying, an Indian servant is seated on the carpet, who watches the bowl of the pipe, ready to replenish it the moment it fails, and every now and then glances upward to the grave face of the officer with a look of unmistakable affection in his soft black eyes.

  The third occupant of the little drawing-room is a pale, thin, studious-looking man, who in seated at a cabinet in a corner away from the window, amongst papers and books, which are heaped in a chaotic pile on the floor about him. Strange books and papers these are. Mathematical charts, inscribed with figures such as perhaps neither Newton or Leplace ever dreamed of. Volumes in old worm-eaten bindings, and written in strange languages long since dead and forgotten upon this earth; but they all seem familiar to this pale student, whose blue spectacles bend over pages of crabbed Arabic as intently as the eyes of a boarding-school miss who devours the last volume of the last new novel. Now and then he scratches a few figures, or a sign in algebra, or a sentence in Arabic, on the paper before him, and then goes back to the book again, never looking up towards the smoker or his Hindoo attendant. Presently the soldier, as he relinquishes his pipe to the Indian to be replenished, breaks the silence.

  “So the great people of London, as well as of Paris, are beginning to believe in you, Laurent?” he says.

  The student lifts his head from his work, and turning the blue spectacles towards the smoker, says in his old unimpassioned manner —

  “How can they do otherwise, when I tell them the truth? These,” he points to the pile of books and papers at his side, “ do not err: they only want to be interpreted rightly. I may have been sometimes mistaken — I have never been deceived.”

  “You draw nice distinctions, Blurosset.”

  “Not at all. If I have made mistakes in the course of my career, it has been from my own ignorance, my own powerlessness to read these aright; not from any shortcoming in the things
themselves. I tell you, they do not deceive.”

  “But will you ever read them aright? Will you ever fathom to the very bottom this dark gulf of forgotten science?”

  “Yes, I am on the right road. I only pray to live long enough to reach the end.”

  “And then — ?”

  “Then it will be within the compass of my own will to live for ever.”

  “Pshaw! The old story — the old delusion. How strange that the wisest on this earth should have been fooled by it!”

  “Make sure that it is a delusion, before you say they were fooled by it, Captain.”

  “Well, my dear Blurosset, Heaven forbid that I should dispute with one so learned as you upon so obscure a subject. I am more at home holding a fort against the Indians than holding an argument against Albertus Magnus. You still, however, persist that this faithful Mujeebez here is in some manner or other linked with my destiny?”

  “I do.”

  “And yet it is very singular! What can connect two men whose experiences in every way are so dissimilar?”

  “I tell you again that he will be instrumental in confounding your enemies.”

  “You know who they are — or rather, who he is. I have but one.”

  “Not two, Captain?”

  “Not two. No, Blurosset. There is but one on whom I would wreak a deep and deadly vengeance.”

  “And for the other?”

  “Pity and forgiveness. Do not speak of that. There are some things which even now I am not strong enough to hear spoken of. That is one of them.”

  “The history of your faithful Mujeebez there is a singular one, is it not?” asks the student, rising from his books, and advancing to the window.

  “A very singular one. His master, an Englishman, with whom he came from Calcutta, and to whom he was devotedly attached—”

  “I was indeed, sahib,” said the Indian, in very good English, but with a strong foreign accent.

  “This master, a rich nabob, was murdered, in the house of his sister, by his own nephew.”

  “Very horrible, and very unnatural! Was the nephew hung?”

  “No. The jury brought in a verdict of insanity: he was sent to a madhouse, where no doubt he still remains confined. Mujeebez was not present at the trial; he had escaped by a miracle with his own life; for the murderer, coming into the little room in which he slept, and finding him stirring, gave him a blow on the head, which placed him for some time in a very precarious state.”

  “And did you see the murderer’s face, Mujeebez?” asks Monsieur Blurosset.

  “No, sahib. It was dark, I could see nothing. The blow stunned me: when I recovered my senses, I was in the hospital, where I lay for months. The shock had brought on what the doctors called a nervous fever. For a long time I was utterly incapable of work; when I left the hospital I had not a friend in the world; but the good lady, the sister of my poor murdered master, gave me money to return to India, where I was kitmutghar for some time to an English colonel, in whose household I learned the language, and whom I did not leave till I entered the service of the good Captain.”

  The “good Captain” laid his hand affectionately on his follower’s white-turbaned head, something with the protecting gesture with which he might caress a favourite and faithful dog.

  “After you had saved my life, Mujeebez,” he said.

  “I would have died to save it, sahib,” answered the Hindoo.

  “A kind word sinks deep in the heart of the Indian.”

  “And there was no doubt of the guilt of this nephew?” asks Blurosset.

  “I cannot say, sahib. I did not know the English language then; I could understand nothing told me, except my poor master’s nephew was not hung, but put in a madhouse.”

  “Did you see him — this nephew?”

  “Yes, sahib, the night before the murder. He came into the room with my master when he retired to rest. I saw him only for a minute, for I left the room as they entered.”

  “Should you know him again?” inquired the student.

  “Anywhere, sahib. He was a handsome young man, with dark hazel eyes and a bright smile. He did not look like a murderer.”

  “That is scarcely a sure rule to go by, is it, Laurent?” asks the Captain, with a bitter smile.

  “I don’t know. A black heart will make strange lines in the handsomest face, which are translatable to the close observer.”

  “Now,” says the officer, rising, and surrendering his pipe to the hands of his watchful attendant—”now for my morning’s ride, and you will have the place to yourself for your scientific visitors, Laurent.”

  “You will not go where you are likely to meet—”

  “Anyone I know? No, Blurosset. The lonelier the road the better I like it. I miss the deep jungle and the tiger-hunt, eh, Mujeebez? — we miss them, do we not?”

  The Hindoo’s eyes brightened, as he answered eagerly, “Yes, indeed, sahib.”

  Captain Lansdown (that is the name of the officer) is of French extraction; he speaks English perfectly, but still with a slightly foreign accent. He has distinguished himself by his marvellous courage and military genius in the Punjaub, and is over in England on leave of absence. It is singular that so great a friendship should exist between this impetuous, danger-loving soldier, and the studious French chemist and pseudo-magician, Laurent Blurosset; but that a very firm friendship does exist between them is evident. They live in the same house; are both waited upon by Egerton Lansdown’s Indian servant, and are constantly together.

  Laurent Blurosset, after becoming the fashion in Paris, is now the rage in London. But he rarely stirs beyond the threshold of his own door, though his presence is eagerly sought for in scientific coteries, where opinion is still, however, divided as to whether he is a charlatan or a great man. The materialists sneer — the spiritualists believe. His disinterestedness, at any rate, speaks in favour of his truth. He will receive no money from any of his numerous visitors. He will serve them, he says, if he can, but he will not sell the wisdom of the mighty dead; for that is something too grand and solemn to be made a thing of barter. His discoveries in chemistry have made him sufficiently rich; and he can afford to devote himself to science, in the hope of finding truth for his reward. He asks no better recompense than the glory of the light he seeks. We leave him, then, to his eager and inquisitive visitors, while the Captain rides slowly through Oxford Street, on his way to the Edgware Road, through which he emerges into the country.

  CHAPTER V. THE NEW MILKMAN IN PARK LANE.

  THE post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some consequence in the servants’ hall. The French chef, who has his private sitting-room, wherein he works elaborate and scientific culinary combinations, which, when he condescends to talk English, he designates “plates,” has of course very little communication with the household. Mrs. Moper is his prime minister; he gives his orders to her for execution, and throws himself back in his easy-chair to think out a dish, while his handmaiden collects for him the vulgar elements of his noble art. Mrs. Moper is a very good cook herself; and when she leaves the Count de Marolles she will go into a family where there is no foreigner kept, and will have forty pounds per annum and a still-room of her own. She is in the caterpillar stage now, Mrs. Sarah Moper, and is content to write herself down kitchenmaid ad interim.

  The servants’-hall dinner and the housekeeper’s repast are both over; but the preparations for the dinner have not yet begun, and Mrs. Moper and Liza, the scullerymaid, snatch half-an-hour’s calm before the coming storm, and sit down to darn stockings, —

  “Which,” Mrs. Moper says, “my toes is through and my heels is out, and never can I get the time to set a stitch. For time there isn’t any in this house for a under-servant, which under-servant I will be no more than one year longer; or say my name’s not Sarah Moper.”

  Liza, who is mending a black stocking with white thread (and a very fanciful effe
ct it has too), evidently has no wish to dispute such a proposition.

  “Indeed, Mrs. Moper,” she said, “that’s the truest word as ever you’ve spoke. It’s well for them as takes their wages for wearin’ silk gowns, and oilin’ of their hair, and lookin’ out of winder to watch the carriages go in at Grosvenor Gate; which, don’t tell me as Life Guardsmen would look up imperdent, if they hadn’t been looked down to likewise.” Eliza gets rather obscure here. “This ‘ouse, Mrs. M., for upper-servants may be leaven, but for unders it’s more like the place as is pronounced like a letter of the alphabet, and isn’t to be named by me.”

  There is no knowing how far this rather revolutionary style of conversation might have gone, for at this moment there came that familiar sound of the clink of milk-pails on the pavement above, and the London cry of milk.

  “It’s Bugden with the milk, Liza; there was a pint of cream wrong in the last bill, Mrs. Mellflower says. Ask him to come down and correctify it, will you, Liza?”

  Liza ascends the area steps and parleys with the milkman; presently he comes jingling down, with his pails swinging against the railings; he is rather awkward with his pails, this milkman, and I’m afraid he must spill more milk than he sells, as the Park Lane pavements testify.

  “It isn’t Bugden,” says Liza, explanatory, as she usher him into the kitchen. “Bugden ‘as ‘urt his leg, a-milkin’ a cow wot kicks when the flies worrits, and ‘as sent this young man, as is rather new to the business, but is anxious to do his best.”

  The new milkman enters the kitchen as she concludes her speech, and releasing himself from the pails, expresses his readiness to settle any mistake in the weekly bill.