The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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murdered? I wish everybody was; and that I could dance my favourite dance upon their graves. Blow that double-six; he’s the fellow I ought to play.”
“Perhaps you’ll give us your auburn-haired friend’s name, Darley,” said a gentleman with his mouth full of Welsh rarebit; “he doesn’t seem too brilliant to live; he’d better have gone to the ‘Deadly Livelies,’ in the other street.” The “Deadly Livelies” was the sobriquet of a rival club, which plumed itself on being a cut above the Cherokees. “Who’s dead?” muttered the domino-player. “I wish everybody was, and that I was contracted with to bury ’em cheap. I should have won the game,” he added plaintively, “if I could have picked up that double-six.”
“I suppose your friend wants to be Vice at our next meeting,” said the gentleman with the billiard-cue; who, in default of a row, always complained that the assembly was too quiet for him.
“It wouldn’t be the first time if he were Vice, and it wouldn’t be the first time if you made him Chair,” said Gus. “Come, old fellow, tell them you’re come back, and ask them if they’re glad to see you?”
The red-haired gentleman at this sprang to his feet, threw off the rosy locks and the ferocious whiskers, and looked round at the Cherokees with his hands in his pockets.
“Daredevil Dick!” A shout arose—one brief wild huzza, such as had not been heard in that room—which, as we know, was none of the quietest—within the memory of the oldest Cherokee. Daredevil Dick—escaped—come back—as handsome as ever—as jolly as ever—as glorious a fellow—as thoroughgoing a brick—as noble-hearted a trump as eight years ago, when he had been the life and soul of all of them! such shaking of hands; everybody shaking hands with him again and again, and then everybody shaking hands with everybody else; and the billiard-player wiping his eyes with his cue; and the sleepy gentleman waking up and rubbing the mustard into his drowsy optics; and the domino-player, who, though he execrates all mankind, wouldn’t hurt the tiniest wing of the tiniest fly, even he makes a miraculous effort, picks up the double-six, and magnanimously presents it to Richard.
“Take it—take it, old fellow, and may it make you happy! If I’d played that domino, I should have won the game.” Upon which he executed two or three steps of a Cherokee dance, and relapsed into the aforesaid imbecile imprecations, in mixed French and English, on the inhabitants of a world not capable of appreciating him.
It was a long time before anything like quiet could be restored; but when it was, Richard addressed the meeting.
“Gentlemen, before the unfortunate circumstance which has so long separated us, you knew me, I believe, well, and I am proud to think you esteemed and trusted me.”
Did they? Oh, rather. They jingled all the glasses, and broke three in the enthusiastic protestation of an affirmative.
“I need not allude to the unhappy accusation of which I have been the victim. You are, I understand, acquainted with the full particulars of my miserable story, and you render me happy by thinking me to be innocent.”
By thinking him to be innocent? By knowing him to be innocent! They are so indignant at the bare thought of anybody believing otherwise, that somebody in the doorway, the Smasher himself, growls out something about a—forcible adjective—noise, and the police.
“Gentlemen, I have this day regained my liberty; thanks to the exertions of a person to whom I am also indebted for my life, and thanks also to the assistance of my old friend Gus Darley.”
Everybody here insisted on shaking hands over again with Gus, which was rather a hindrance to the speaker’s progress; but at last Richard went on,—
“Now, gentlemen, relying on your friendship” (hear, hear! and another glass broken), “I am about to appeal to you to assist me in the future object of my life. That object will be to discover the real murderer of my uncle, Montague Harding. In what manner, when, or where you may be able to assist me in this, I cannot at present say, but you are all, gentlemen, men of talent.” (More glasses broken, and a good deal of beer spilt into everybody’s boots.) “You are all men of varied experience, of inexhaustible knowledge of the world, and of the life of London. Strange things happen every day of our lives. Who shall say that some one amongst you may not fall, by some strange accident, or let me say rather by the handiwork of Providence, across a clue to this at present entirely unravelled mystery? Promise me, therefore, gentlemen, to give me the benefit of your experience; and whenever that experience throws you into the haunts of bad men, remember that the man I seek may, by some remote chance, be amongst them; and that to find him is the one object of my life. I cannot give you the faintest index to what he may be, or who he may be. He may be dead, and beyond the reach of justice—but he may live! and if he does, Heaven grant that the man who has suffered the stigma of his guilt may track him to his doom. Gentlemen, tell me that your hearts go with me.”
They told him so, not once, but a dozen times; shaking hands with him, and pushing divers liquors into his hand every time. But they got over it at last, and the gentleman with the billiard-cue rapped their heads with that instrument to tranquillize them, and then rose as president, and said,—
“Richard Marwood, our hearts go with you, thoroughly and entirely, and we swear to give you the best powers of our intellects and the utmost strength of our abilities to aid you in your search. Gentlemen, are you prepared to subscribe to this oath?”
They were prepared to subscribe to it, and they did subscribe to it, every one of them—rather noisily, but very heartily.
When they had done so, a gentleman emerges from the shadow of the doorway, who is no other than the illustrious Left-handed one, who had come upstairs in answer to Darley’s summons, just before Richard addressed the Cherokees. The Smasher was not a handsome man. His nose had been broken a good many times, and that hadn’t improved him; he had a considerable number of scars about his face, including almost every known variety of cut, and they didn’t improve him. His complexion, again, bore perhaps too close a resemblance to mottled soap to come within the region of the beautiful; but he had a fine and manly expression of countenance, which, in his amiable moments, reminded the beholder of a benevolent bulldog.
He came up to Richard, and took him by the hand. It was no small ordeal of courage to shake hands with the Left-handed Smasher, but Daredevil Dick stood it like a man.
“Mr. Richard Marwood,” said he, “you’ve been a good friend to me, ever since you was old enough—” he stopped here, and cast about in his mind for the fitting pursuits of early youth—“ever since you was old enough to give a cove a black eye, or knock your friend’s teeth down his throat with a light backhander. I’ve known you down stairs, a-swearin’ at the barmaid, and holdin’ your own agin the whole lot of the Cheerfuls, when other young gents of your age was a-makin’ themselves bad with sweetstuffs and green apples, and callin’ it life. I’ve known you help that gent yonder,” he gave a jerk with his thumb in the direction of the domino-player, “to wrench off his own pa’s knocker, and send it to him by twopenny post next mornin’, seventeen and sixpence to pay postage; but I never know’d you to do a bad action, or to hit out upon a cove as was down.”
Richard thanked the Smasher for his good opinion, and they shook hands again.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” continued the host, “I’m a man of few words. If a cove offends me, I give him my left between his eyes, playful; if he does it agen, I give him my left agen, with a meanin’, and he don’t repeat it. If a gent as I like does me proud, I feels grateful, and when I has a chance I shows him my gratitude. Mr. Richard Marwood, I’m your friend to the last spoonful of my claret; and let the man as murdered your uncle keep clear of my left mawley, if he wants to preserve his beauty.”
Chapter VI
Mr. Peters Relates How He Thought He had a Clue, and How He Lost It
A week