"I should like very much to hear him, then," said the stranger, curiously. And while he spoke, the door of No. 7 opened abruptly. A huge head, covered with matted hair, was thrust for a moment through the aperture, and two dull eyes, that seemed covered with a film like that of the birds which feed on the dead, met the stranger"s bold, sparkling orbs.
"h.e.l.l and fury!" bawled out the voice of this ogre, like a clap of near thunder, "if you two keep tramp, tramp, there close at my door, I"ll make you meat for the surgeons, b---- you!"
"Stop a moment, my civil friend," said the stranger, advancing; "just stand where you are: I should like to make a sketch of your head."
That head protruded farther from the door, and with it an enormous bulk of chest and shoulder. But the adventurous visitor was not to be daunted. He took out, very coolly, a pencil and the back of a letter, and began his sketch.
The body-s.n.a.t.c.her stared at him an instant in mute astonishment; but that operation and the composure of the artist were so new to him that they actually inspired him with terror. He slunk back, banged to the door; and the stranger, putting up his implements, said, with a disdainful laugh, to Beck, who had slunk away into a corner,--
"No. 7 knows well how to take care of No. 1. Lead on, and be quick, then!"
As they continued to mount, they heard the body-s.n.a.t.c.her growling and blaspheming in his den, and the sound made Beck clamber the quicker, till at the next landing-place he took breath, threw open a door, and Jason, pus.h.i.+ng him aside, entered first.
The interior of the room bespoke better circ.u.mstances than might have been supposed from the approach; the floor was covered with sundry sc.r.a.ps of carpet, formerly of different hues and patterns, but mellowed by time into one threadbare ma.s.s of grease and canvas. There was a good fire on the hearth, though the night was warm; there were sundry volumes piled round the walls, in the binding peculiar to law books; in a corner stood a tall desk, of the fas.h.i.+on used by clerks, perched on tall, slim legs, and companioned by a tall, slim stool. On a table before the fire were scattered the remains of the nightly meal,--broiled bones, the skeleton of a herring; and the steam rose from a tumbler containing a liquid colourless as water, but poisonous as gin.
The room was squalid and dirty, and bespoke mean and slovenly habits; but it did not bespeak penury and want, it had even an air of filthy comfort of its own,--the comfort of the swine in its warm sty. The occupant of the chamber was in keeping with the localities. Figure to yourself a man of middle height, not thin, but void of all muscular flesh,--bloated, puffed, unwholesome. He was dressed in a gray-flannel gown and short breeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet in slippers. The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs were those of a skeleton; the cheeks full and swollen, like a ploughboy"s, but livid, bespeckled, of a dull lead-colour, like a patient in the dropsy.
The head, covered in patches with thin, yellowish hair, gave some promise of intellect, for the forehead was high, and appeared still more so from partial baldness; the eyes, embedded in fat and wrinkled skin, were small and l.u.s.treless, but they still had that acute look which education and ability communicate to the human orb; the mouth most showed the animal,--full-lipped, coa.r.s.e, and sensual; while behind one of two great ears stuck a pen.
You see before you, then, this slatternly figure,--slipshod, half-clothed, with a sort of shabby demi-gentility about it, half ragam.u.f.fin, half clerk; while in strong contrast appeared the new-comer, scrupulously neat, new, with bright black-satin stock, coat cut jauntily to the waist, varnished boots, kid gloves, and trim mustache.
Behind this sleek and comely personage, on knock-knees, in torn s.h.i.+rt open at the throat, with apathetic, listless, unlighted face, stood the lean and gawky Beck.
"Set a chair for the gentleman," said the inmate of the chamber to Beck, with a dignified wave of the hand.
"How do you do, Mr.--Mr.--humph--Jason? How do you do? Always smart and blooming; the world thrives with you."
"The world is a farm that thrives with all who till it properly, Grabman," answered Jason, dryly; and with his handkerchief he carefully dusted the chair, on which he then daintily deposited his person.
"But who is your Ganymede, your valet, your gentleman-usher?"
"Oh, a lad about town who lodges above and does odd jobs for me,--brushes my coat, cleans my shoes, and after his day"s work goes an errand now and then. Make yourself scarce, Beck! Anatomy, vanis.h.!.+"
Beck grinned, nodded, pulled hard at a flake of his hair, and closed the door.
"One of your brotherhood, that?" asked Jason, carelessly.
"He, oaf? No," said Grabman, with profound contempt in his sickly visage. "He works for his bread,--instinct! Turnspits and truffle-dogs and some silly men have it! What an age since we met! Shall I mix you a tumbler?"
"You know I never drink your vile spirits; though in Champagne and Bordeaux I am any man"s match."
"And how the devil do you keep old black thoughts out of your mind by those washy potations?"
"Old black thoughts--of what?"
"Of black actions, Jason. We have not met since you paid me for recommending the nurse who attended your uncle in his last illness."
"Well, poor coward?"
Grabman knit his thin eyebrows and gnawed his blubber lips.
"I am no coward, as you know."
"Not when a thing is to be done, but after it is done. You brave the substance, and tremble at the shadow. I dare say you see ugly goblins in the dark, Grabman?"
"Ay, ay; but it is no use talking to you. You call yourself Jason because of your yellow hair, or your love for the golden fleece; but your old comrades call you "Rattlesnake," and you have its blood, as its venom."
"And its charm, man," added Jason, with a strange smile, that, though hypocritical and constrained, had yet a certain softness, and added greatly to the comeliness of features which many might call beautiful, and all would allow to be regular and symmetrical. "I shall find at least ten love-letters on my table when I go home. But enough of these fopperies, I am here on business."
"Law, of course; I am your man. Who"s the victim?" and a hideous grin on Grabman"s face contrasted the sleek smile that yet lingered upon his visitor"s.
"No; something less hazardous, but not less lucrative than our old practices. This is a business that may bring you hundreds, thousands; that may take you from this hovel to speculate at the West End; that may change your gin into Lafitte, and your herring into venison; that may lift the broken attorney again upon the wheel,--again to roll down, it may be; but that is your affair."
""Fore Gad, open the case," cried Grabman, eagerly, and shoving aside the ign.o.ble relics of his supper, he leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his damp palms, while eyes that positively brightened into an expression of greedy and relentless intelligence were fixed upon his visitor.
"The case runs thus," said Jason. "Once upon a time there lived, at an old house in Hamps.h.i.+re called Laughton, a wealthy baronet named St.
John. He was a bachelor, his estates at his own disposal. He had two nieces and a more distant kinsman. His eldest niece lived with him,--she was supposed to be destined for his heiress; circ.u.mstances needless to relate brought upon this girl her uncle"s displeasure,--she was dismissed his house. Shortly afterwards he died, leaving to his kinsman--a Mr. Vernon--his estates, with remainder to Vernon"s issue, and in default thereof, first to the issue of the younger niece, next to that of the elder and disinherited one. The elder married, and was left a widow without children. She married again, and had a son. Her second husband, for some reason or other, conceived ill opinions of his wife.
In his last illness (he did not live long) he resolved to punish the wife by robbing the mother. He sent away the son, nor have we been able to discover him since. It is that son whom you are to find."
"I see, I see; go on," said Grabman. "This son is now the remainderman.
How lost? When? What year? What trace?"
"Patience. You will find in this paper the date of the loss and the age of the child, then a mere infant. Now for the trace. This husband--did I tell you his name? No? Alfred Braddell--had one friend more intimate than the rest,--John Walter Ardworth, a cas.h.i.+ered officer, a ruined man, pursued by bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs. To this man we have lately had reason to believe that the child was given. Ardworth, however, was shortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors. We know that he went to India; but if residing there, it must have been under some new name, and we fear he is now dead. All our inquiries, at least after this man, have been fruitless. Before he went abroad, he left with his old tutor a child corresponding in age to that of Mrs. Braddell"s. In this child she thinks she recognizes her son. All that you have to do is to trace his ident.i.ty by good legal evidence. Don"t smile in that foolish way,--I mean sound, bona fide evidence that will stand the fire of cross-examination; you know what that is! You will therefore find out,--first, whether Braddell did consign his child to Ardworth, and, if so, you must then follow Ardworth, with that child in his keeping, to Matthew Fielden"s house, whose address you find noted in the paper I gave you, together with many other memoranda as to Ardworth"s creditors and those whom he is likely to have come across."
"John Ardworth, I see!"
"John Walter Ardworth,--commonly called Walter; he, like me, preferred to be known only by his second baptismal name. He, because of a favourite Radical G.o.dfather; I, because Honore is an inconvenient Gallicism. And perhaps when Honore Mirabeau (my G.o.dfather) went out of fas.h.i.+on with the sans-culottes, my father thought Gabriel a safer designation. Now I have told you all."
"What is the mother"s maiden name?"
"Her maiden name was Clavering; she was married under that of Dalibard, her first husband."
"And," said Grabman, looking over the notes in the paper given to him, "it is at Liverpool that the husband died, and whence the child was sent away?"
"It is so; to Liverpool you will go first. I tell you fairly, the task is difficult, for hitherto it has foiled me. I knew but one man who, without flattery, could succeed, and therefore I spared no pains to find out Nicholas Grabman. You have the true ferret"s faculty; you, too, are a lawyer, and snuff evidence in every breath. Find us a son,--a legal son,--a son to be shown in a court of law, and the moment he steps into the lands and the Hall of Laughton, you have five thousand pounds."
"Can I have a bond to that effect?"
"My bond, I fear, is worth no more than my word. Trust to the last; if I break it, you know enough of my secrets to hang me!"
"Don"t talk of hanging; I hate that subject. But stop. If found, does this son succeed? Did this Mr. Vernon leave no heir; this other sister continue single, or prove barren?"
"Oh, true! He, Mr. Vernon, who by will took the name of St. John, he left issue; but only one son still survives, a minor and unmarried. The sister, too, left a daughter; both are poor, sickly creatures,--their lives not worth a straw. Never mind them. You find Vincent Braddell, and he will not be long out of his property, nor you out of your 5,000 pounds! You see, under these circ.u.mstances a bond might become dangerous evidence!"
Grabman emitted a fearful and tremulous chuckle,--a laugh like the laugh of a superst.i.tious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards.
He chuckled, and his hair bristled. But after a pause, in which he seemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you are a strange man, Jason; you love your joke. I have nothing to do except to find out this ultimate remainderman; mind that!"
"Perfectly; nothing like subdivision of labour."