CHAPTER XXXII

The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln’s Inn—perplexed and troublous valley of the

shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day—and

fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down

the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine

o’clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are

shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of

sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows

clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a

fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at

the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little

patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and

conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes

of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an

acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their

species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,

for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and

bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and

supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged

with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been

lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and

scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of

passengers—Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged

congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on

a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and

the fact of Mr. Krook’s being “continually in liquor,” and the

testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of

their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the

Harmonic Meeting at the Sol’s Arms, where the sound of the piano

through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and

where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar

like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a

concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to

“Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!” Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.

Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of

professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who

has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,

Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year

and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,

and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol’s Arms every

night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.

“Sooner than which, myself,” says Mrs. Perkins, “I would get my

living by selling lucifers.” Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the

same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public

applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.

Perkins’) respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol’s Arms

appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that

tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.

Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was

fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to

bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court

and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen

in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,

the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be

suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis

that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there

is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming

night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the

sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the

registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the

air—there is plenty in it—or it may be something in himself that is

in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He

comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty

times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since

the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,

Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight

velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all

proportion), oftener than before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for

he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the

secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a

partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what

seems to be its fountain-head—the rag and bottle shop in the court.

It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by

the Sol’s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out

at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated

after-supper stroll of ten minutes’ long from his own door and back

again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

“What, Mr. Weevle?” says the stationer, stopping to speak. “Are YOU

there?”

“Aye!” says Weevle, “Here I am, Mr. Snagsby.”

“Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?” the stationer

inquires.

“Why, there’s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not

very freshening,” Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

“Very true, sir. Don’t you observe,” says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to

sniff and taste the air a little, “don’t you observe, Mr. Weevle,

that you’re—not to put too fine a point upon it—that you’re rather

greasy here, sir?”

“Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in

the place to-night,” Mr. Weevle rejoins. “I suppose it’s chops at the

Sol’s Arms.”

“Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?” Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes

again. “Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at

the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning ’em, sir!

And I don’t think”—Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then

spits and wipes his mouth—“I don’t think—not to put too fine a

point upon it—that they were quite fresh when they were shown the

gridiron.”

“That’s very likely. It’s a tainting sort of weather.”

“It IS a tainting sort of weather,” says Mr. Snagsby, “and I find it

sinking to the spirits.”

“By George! I find it gives me the horrors,” returns Mr. Weevle.

“Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,

with a black circumstance hanging over it,” says Mr. Snagsby, looking

in past the other’s shoulder along the dark passage and then falling

back a step to look up at the house. “I couldn’t live in that room

alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an

evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and

stand here sooner than sit there. But then it’s very true that you

didn’t see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.”

“I know quite enough about it,” returns Tony.

“It’s not agreeable, is it?” pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough

of mild persuasion behind his hand. “Mr. Krook ought to consider it

in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.”

“I hope he does,” says Tony. “But I doubt it.”

“You find the rent too high, do you, sir?” returns the stationer.

“Rents ARE high about here. I don’t know how it is exactly, but the

law seems to put things up in price. Not,” adds Mr. Snagsby with his

apologetic cough, “that I mean to say a word against the profession I

get my living by.”

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the

stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a

star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his

way out of this conversation.

“It’s a curious fact, sir,” he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,

“that he should have been—”

“Who’s he?” interrupts Mr. Weevle.

“The deceased, you know,” says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and

right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on

the button.

“Ah, to be sure!” returns the other as if he were not over-fond of

the subject. “I thought we had done with him.”

“I was only going to say it’s a curious fact, sir, that he should

have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that

you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which

there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,”

says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have

unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, “because

I have known writers that have gone into brewers’ houses and done

really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,” adds Mr.

Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.

“It’s a curious coincidence, as you say,” answers Weevle, once more

glancing up and down the court.

“Seems a fate in it, don’t there?” suggests the stationer.

“There does.”

“Just so,” observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. “Quite

a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid

you good night”—Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go,

though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since

he stopped to speak—“my little woman will be looking for me else.

Good night, sir!”

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of

looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His

little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol’s Arms all this

time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over

her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching

glance as she goes past.

“You’ll know me again, ma’am, at all events,” says Mr. Weevle to

himself; “and I can’t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you

are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER

coming!”

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his

finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.

Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is

he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they

speak low.

“I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,”

says Tony.

“Why, I said about ten.”

“You said about ten,” Tony repeats. “Yes, so you did say about ten.

But according to my count, it’s ten times ten—it’s a hundred

o’clock. I never had such a night in my life!”

“What has been the matter?”

“That’s it!” says Tony. “Nothing has been the matter. But here have I

been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the

horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE’S a blessed-looking

candle!” says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his

table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

“That’s easily improved,” Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers

in hand.

“IS it?” returns his friend. “Not so easily as you think. It has been

smouldering like that ever since it was lighted.”

“Why, what’s the matter with you, Tony?” inquires Mr. Guppy, looking

at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the

table.

“William Guppy,” replies the other, “I am in the downs. It’s this

unbearably dull, suicidal room—and old Boguey downstairs, I

suppose.” Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with

his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,

and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his

head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy

attitude.

“Wasn’t that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?”

“Yes, and he—yes, it was Snagsby,” said Mr. Weevle, altering the

construction of his sentence.

“On business?”

“No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose.”

“I thought it was Snagsby,” says Mr. Guppy, “and thought it as well

that he shouldn’t see me, so I waited till he was gone.”

“There we go again, William G.!” cried Tony, looking up for an

instant. “So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to

commit a murder, we couldn’t have more mystery about it!”

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the

conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the

room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey

with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she

is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a

vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious

piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of

fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

“That’s very like Lady Dedlock,” says Mr. Guppy. “It’s a speaking

likeness.”

“I wish it was,” growls Tony, without changing his position. “I

should have some fashionable conversation, here, then.”

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a

more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and

remonstrates with him.

“Tony,” says he, “I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for

no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I

do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who

has an unrequited image imprinted on his ’eart. But there are bounds

to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will

acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don’t think your manner on the

present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.”

“This is strong language, William Guppy,” returns Mr. Weevle.

“Sir, it may be,” retorts Mr. William Guppy, “but I feel strongly

when I use it.”

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy

to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the

advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured

remonstrance.

“No! Dash it, Tony,” says that gentleman, “you really ought to be

careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited

image imprinted on his ’eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those

chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in

yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the

taste. It is not—happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I

could say the same—it is not your character to hover around one

flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry

you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound

even your feelings without a cause!”

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying

emphatically, “William Guppy, drop it!” Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with

the reply, “I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.”

“And now,” says Tony, stirring the fire, “touching this same bundle

of letters. Isn’t it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have

appointed twelve o’clock to-night to hand ’em over to me?”

“Very. What did he do it for?”

“What does he do anything for? HE don’t know. Said to-day was his

birthday and he’d hand ’em over to-night at twelve o’clock. He’ll

have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.”

“He hasn’t forgotten the appointment, I hope?”

“Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him

to-night, about eight—helped him to shut up his shop—and he had got

the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed ’em

me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his

cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I

heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming

like the wind, the only song he knows—about Bibo, and old Charon,

and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been

as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole.”

“And you are to go down at twelve?”

“At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a

hundred.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs

crossed, “he can’t read yet, can he?”

“Read! He’ll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and

he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on

that much, under me; but he can’t put them together. He’s too old to

acquire the knack of it now—and too drunk.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, “how do

you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?”

“He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has

and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye

alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and

asked me what it meant.”

“Tony,” says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,

“should you say that the original was a man’s writing or a woman’s?”

“A woman’s. Fifty to one a lady’s—slopes a good deal, and the end of

the letter ‘n,’ long and hasty.”

Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,

generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he

is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It

takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.

“Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is

there a chimney on fire?”

“Chimney on fire!”

“Ah!” returns Mr. Guppy. “See how the soot’s falling. See here, on my

arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won’t blow

off—smears like black fat!”

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a

little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says

it’s all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to

Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol’s Arms.

“And it was then,” resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable

aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before

the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads

very near together, “that he told you of his having taken the bundle

of letters from his lodger’s portmanteau?”

“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 to-night 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 to-night 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 its being 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.”

“May be 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 advance 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? Oh, 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.