But why a banker? Why, possessed of an enormous fortune, try to extend that fortune by speculation? That question lies between Raymond de Marolles and his conscience. Perhaps there are no bounds to the ambition of this man, who entered Paris eight years ago an obscure adventurer, and who, according to some accounts, is now a millionaire.
CHAPTER II
MR. PETERS SEES A GHOST
Mr. Peters, pensioned off by Richard’s mother with an income of a hundred pounds a year, has taken and furnished for himself a small house in a very small square not far from Mr. Darley’s establishment, and rejoicing in the high-sounding address of Wellington Square, Waterloo Road. Having done this, he feels that he has nothing more to do in life than to retire upon his laurels, and enjoy the otium cum dignitate1 which he has earned so well.
Of course Mr. Peters, as a single man, cannot by any possibility do for2 himself; and as—having started an establishment of his own—he is no longer in a position to be taken in and done for, the best thing he can do is to send for Kuppins; accordingly he does send for Kuppins.
Kuppins is to be cook, housekeeper, laundress, and parlour-maid all in one; and she is to have ten pounds per annum, and her tea, sugar, and beer—wages only known in Slopperton in very high and aristocratic families where footmen are kept and no followers or Sundays out allowed.
So Kuppins comes to London, bringing the “fondling” with her; and arriving at the Euston Square station at eight o’clock in the evening, is launched into the dazzlingly bewildering gaiety of the New Road.3
Well, it is not paved with gold certainly, this marvellous city; and it is, maybe, on the whole, just a little muddy. But oh, the shops—what emporiums of splendour! What delightful excitement in being nearly run over every minute!—to say nothing of that delicious chance of being knocked down by the crowd which is collected round a drunken woman expostulating with a policeman. Of course there must be a general election, or a great fire, or a man hanging, or a mad ox at large, or a murder just committed in the next street, or something wonderful going on, or there never could be such crowds of excited pedestrians, and such tearing and rushing, and smashing of cabs, carts, omnibuses, and parcel-delivery vans, all of them driven by charioteers in the last stage of insanity, and drawn by horses as wild as that time-honoured steed employed in the artistic and poetical punishment of our old friend Mazeppa.4 Tottenham Court Road! What a magnificent promenade! Occupied, of course, by the houses of the nobility! And is that magnificent establishment with the iron shutters Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London? Kuppins inclines to thinking it must be the Tower of London, because the iron shutters look so warlike, and are evidently intended as a means of defence in case of an attack from the French.
Kuppins is told by her escort, Mr. Peters, that this is the emporium of Messrs. Shoolbred, haberdashers and linen-drapers. She thinks she must be dreaming, and wants to be pinched and awakened before she proceeds any further. It is rather a trying journey for Mr. Peters; for Kuppins wants to stop the cab every twenty yards or so, to get out and look at something in this wonderful Tottenham Court Road.
But the worst of Kuppins, perhaps, is, that she has almost an insane desire to see that Tottenham Court whence Tottenham Court Road derives its name; and when told that there is no such place, and never was—leastways, never as Mr. Peters heard of—she begins to think London, in spite of all its glories, rather a take-in. Then, again, Kuppins is very much disappointed at not passing either Westminster Abbey or the Bank of England, which she had made up her mind were both situated at Charing Cross; and it was a little trying for Mr. Peters to be asked whether every moderate-sized church they passed was St. Paul’s Cathedral, or every little bit of dead wall Newgate. To go over a bridge, and for it not to be London Bridge, but Waterloo Bridge, was in itself a mystery; but to be told that the Shot Tower on the Surrey side was not the Monument was too bewildering for endurance. As to the Victoria Theatre, which was illuminated to such a degree that the box-entrance seemed as a pathway to fairyland, Kuppins was so thoroughly assured in her own mind of its being Drury Lane and nothing else, unless, perhaps, the Houses of Parliament or Covent Garden—that no protestations on Mr. Peters’s fingers could root out the fallacy.
But the journey came to an end at last; and Kuppins, safe with bag and baggage at No. 17, Wellington Square, partook of real London saveloys5 and real London porter6 with Mr. Peters and the “fondling,” in an elegant front parlour, furnished with a brilliantly-polished but rather rickety Pembroke table, that was covered with a Royal Stuart plaid woollen cloth; half-a-dozen cane-seated chairs, so new and highly polished as to be apt to adhere to the garments of the person who so little understood their nature or properties as to attempt to sit upon them; a Kidderminster carpet,7 the pattern of which was of the size adapted to the requirements of a town hall, but which looked a little disproportionate to Mr. Peters’s apartment, two patterns and a quarter stretching the entire length of the room; and a mantelpiece ornamented with a looking-glass divided into three compartments by gilded Corinthian pillars, and further adorned with two black velvet kittens, one at each corner, and a parti-coloured velvet boy on a brown velvet donkey in the centre.
The next morning Mr. Peters announced his intention of taking the “fondling” into the city of London, for the purpose of showing him the outside of St. Paul’s, the Monument, Punch and Judy, and other intellectual exhibitions adapted to his tender years. Kuppins was for starting then and there on a visit to the pig-faced lady, than which magnificent creature she could not picture any greater wonder in the whole metropolis; but Kuppins had to stay at home in her post of housekeeper, and to inspect and arrange the domestic machinery of No. 17, Wellington Square. So the “fondling,” being magnificently arrayed in a clean collar and a pair of boots that were too small for him, took hold of his protector’s hand, and they sallied forth.
If anything, Punch and Judy bore off the palm in this young gentleman’s judgment of the miracles of the big village.
It was not so sublime a sight, perhaps, as the outside of St. Paul’s; but, on the other hand, it was a great deal cleaner; and the “fondling” would have liked to have seen Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece picked out with a little fresh paint before he was called upon to admire it. The Monument, no doubt, was very charming in the abstract; but unless he could have been perpetually on the top of it, and perpetually within a hair’s breadth of precipitating himself on to the pavement below, it wasn’t very much in his way. But Punch, with his delightfully original style of 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,8 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?”9
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. Peters, who doesn’t seem to be a person blest with the faculty of hearing, but who is, to all appearance, busily engaged in drawing the attention of the “fondling” to the architectural beauties of Grosvenor Gate, may nevertheless take due note of this remark.
The elegant banker ascends the steps of his house, at the hall-door of which stand gorgeous and obsequious flunkeys, whose liveries and legs alike fill with admiration the juvenile mind of the “fondling.”
Mr. Peters is very grave for some time, as they walk away; but at last, when they have got halfway down Piccadilly, he has recourse once more to his fingers, and addresses his young friend thus:
“What did you think of him, Slosh?”
“Which,” says the “fondling;” “the cove in the red velvet breeches as opened the door, or the swell ghost?”
“The swell.”
“Well, I think he’s uncommon handsome, and very easy in his manners, all things taken into consideration,” said that elderly juvenile with deliberation.
“Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?”
Slosh repeats that he does.
Mr. Peters’s gravity increases every moment. “Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?” he asks again, and again the boy answers. At last, to the considerable inconvenience of the passers-by, the detective makes a dead stop, and says, “I’m glad you think him han’some, Slosh; and I’m glad you thinks him easy, which, all things considered, he is, uncommon. In fact, I’m glad he meets your views as far as personal appearance goes, because, between you and me, Slosh, that man’s your father.”
It is the boy’s turn to hold on to the lamp-post now. To have a ghost for a father, and, as Slosh afterwards remarked, “a ghost as wears polishy boots, and lives in Park Lane, too,
” was enough to take the breath out of any boy, however preternaturally elderly and superhumanly sharp his police-office experiences may have made him. On the whole, the “fondling” bears the shock very well, shakes off the effect of the information, and is ready for more in a minute.
“I wouldn’t have you mention it just now, you know, Slosh,” continues Mr. Peters, “because we don’t know what he may turn out, and whether he may quite answer our purpose in the parental line. There’s a little outstanding matter between me and him that I shall have to look him up for. I may want your help; and if I do, you’ll give it faithful, won’t you, Slosh?”
“Of course I will,” said that young gentleman. “Is there any reward out for him, father?” He always called Mr. Peters father, and wasn’t prepared to change his habit in deference to any ghostly phenomenon in the way of a parent suddenly turning up in Lombard Street. “Is there any reward out for him?” he asks, eagerly; “bankers is good for something in the levanting10 line, I know, nowadays.”
The detective looked at the boy’s sharp thin features with a scrutinising glance common to men of his profession.
“Then you’ll serve me faithful, if I want you, Slosh? I thought perhaps you might let family interests interfere with business, you know.”
“Not a bit of it,” said the youthful enthusiast. “I’d hang my grandmother for a sovering, and the pride of catching her, if she was a downy11 one.”
“Chips of old blocks is of the same wood, and it’s only reasonable there should be a similarity in the grain,” mused Mr. Peters, as he and the “fondling” rode home in an omnibus. “I thought I’d make him a genius, but I didn’t know there was such a undercurrent of his father. It’ll make him the glory of his profession. Soft-heartedness has been the ruin of many a detective as has had the brains to work out a deep-laid game, but not the heart to carry it through.”
The Trail of the Serpent Page 30
