The Solitary House (117 page)

“That was the time, sir,” answers Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. “Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for tonight, and advising him not to call before: Boguey being a Slyboots.”

The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle, sits so ill upon him tonight, that he abandons that and his whiskers together; and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up, a prey to the horrors again.

“You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That’s the arrangement, isn’t it, Tony?” asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail.

“You can’t speak too low. Yes. That’s what he and I agreed.”

“I tell you what, Tony—”

“You can’t speak too low,” says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.

“I tell you what. The first thing to be done is, to make another packet, like the real one; so that, if he should ask to see the real one while it’s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.”

“And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it—which with his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely than not,” suggests Tony.

“Then we’ll face it out. They don’t belong to him, and they never did. You found that; and you placed them in my hands—a legal friend of yours—for security. If he forces us to it, they’ll be producible, won’t they?”

“Ye-es,” is Mr. Weevle’s reluctant admission.

“Why, Tony,” remonstrates his friend, “how you look! You don’t doubt William Guppy? You don’t suspect any harm?”

“I don’t suspect anything more than I know, William,” returns the other, gravely.

“And what do you know?” urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little; but on his friend’s once more warning him, “I tell you, you can’t speak too low,” he repeats his question without any sound at all; forming with his lips only the words, “What do you know?”

“I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in secrecy; a pair of conspirators.”

“Well!” says Mr. Guppy, “and we had better be that, than a pair
of noodles, which we should be, if we were doing anything else; for it’s the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?”

“Secondly, it’s not made out to me how it’s likely to be profitable, after all.”

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, and replies, “Tony, you are asked to leave that to the honour of your friend. Besides it’s been calculated to serve that friend, in those chords of the human mind which—which need not be called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion—your friend is no fool. What’s that?”

“It’s eleven o’clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul’s. Listen, and you’ll hear all the bells in the city jangling.”

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant, resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of whispering is, that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunted by the ghosts of sound—strange cracks and tickings, the rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of dreadful feet, that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be, that the air is full of these phantoms; and the two look over their shoulders by one consent, to see that the door is shut.

“Yes, Tony?” says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire, and biting his unsteady thumb-nail. “You were going to say, thirdly?”

“It’s far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.”

“But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony.”

“Maybe not, still I don’t like it. Live here by yourself, and see how
you
like it.”

“As to dead men, Tony,” proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal, “there have been dead men in most rooms.”

“I know there have; but in most rooms you let them alone, and—and they let you alone,” Tony answers.

The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to the effect that they may be doing the deceased a
service; that he hopes so. There is an oppressive blank, until Mr. Weevle, by stirring the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been stirred instead.

“Fah! Here’s more of this hateful soot hanging about,” says he. “Let us open the window a bit, and get a mouthful of air. It’s too close.”

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near, to admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking up; but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy tone.

“By the by, Tony, don’t forget old Smallweed”; meaning the Younger of that name, “I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family.”

“I remember,” says Tony. “I am up to all that.”

“And as to Krook,” resumes Mr. Guppy. “Now, do you suppose he really has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to you, since you have been such allies?”

Tony shakes his head. “I don’t know. Can’t imagine. If we get through this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better informed no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don’t know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is, and what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end, may easily be the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It’s a monomania with him, to think he is possessed of documents. He has been going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should judge, from what he tells me.”

“How did he first come by that idea, though? that’s the question,” Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic meditation. “He may have found papers in something he bought, where papers were not supposed to be; and may have got it into his shrewd head, from the manner and place of their concealment, that they are worth something.”

“Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may have been muddled altogether, by long staring at whatever he
has
got, and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor’s Court and hearing of documents for ever,” returns Mr. Weevle.

Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily draws his hand away.

“What in the Devil’s name,” he says, “is this! Look at my fingers!”

A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.

“What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of window?”

“I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been here!” cries the lodger.

And yet look here—and look here! When he brings the candle, here, from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips, and creeps away down the bricks; here, lies in a little thick nauseous pool.

“This is a horrible house,” says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window. “Give me some water, or I shall cut my hand off.”

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy, and stood silently before the fire, when Saint Paul’s bell strikes twelve and all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various heights in the dark air and in their many tones. When all is quiet again, the lodger says:

“It’s the appointed time at last. Shall I go?”

Mr. Guppy nods, and gives him a “lucky touch” on the back; but not with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.

He goes downstairs; and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself, before the fire, for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the stairs creak, and Tony comes swiftly back.

“Have you got them?”

“Got them! No. The old man’s not there.”

He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval, that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him, and asks loudly, “What’s the matter?”

“I couldn’t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there—and the soot is there, and the oil is there—and he is not there!”—Tony ends this with a groan.

Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has retreated close to it, and stands snarling—not at them; at something on the ground, before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering suffocating vapour in the room, and a dark greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair back, hang the old man’s hairy cap and coat.

“Look!” whispers the lodger, pointing his friend’s attention to these objects with a trembling finger. “I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair—his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off, before he went to put the shutters up—and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor.”

Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.

“See!” whispers Tony. “At the foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall.”

“What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr. Guppy. “Look at her!”

“Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place.”

They advanced slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground, before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder
from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is—is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he
is
here! and this from which we run away, striking out the light and overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! come into this house for Heaven’s sake!

Plenty will come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that Court, true to his title in his last act, has died the death of all Lord Chancellors in all Courts, and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name Your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only—Spontaneous Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died.

*

CHAPTER 33

INTERLOPERS

N
ow do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons who attended the last Coroner’s Inquest at the Sol’s Arms, reappear in the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol’s parlour, and write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the most
intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be remembered, that some time back a painful sensation was created in the public mind, by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits, far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable coincidence, Krook was examined at the Inquest, which it may be recalled was held on that occasion at the Sol’s Arms, a well-conducted tavern, immediately adjoining the premises in question on the west side, and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible), how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical occurrence which forms the subject of that present account transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful, that Mr. Swills, a comic vocalist, professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby, has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M. Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing a series of concerts called Harmonic Assemblies or Meetings, which it would appear are held at the Sol’s Arms, under Mr. Bogsby’s direction, pursuant to the Act of George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously affected by the impure state of the atmosphere; his jocose expression, at the time, being, “that he was like an empty post-office, for he hadn’t a single note in him.” How this account of Mr. Swills is entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in the same court, and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins; both of whom observed the foetid effluvia, and regarded them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook, the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more, the two gentlemen, who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy catastrophe, write down on the spot; and the boy population of the court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol’s Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about it.