The Greatest Mysteries of Wilkie Collins (Illustrated Edition). Уилки Коллинз
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of myself.
The coffee was brought in by Madame Fosco. He kissed her hand in grateful acknowledgment, and escorted her to the door; returned, poured out a cup of coffee for himself, and took it to the writing-table.
“May I offer you some coffee, Mr. Hartright?” he said, before he sat down.
I declined.
“What! you think I shall poison you?” he said gaily. “The English intellect is sound, so far as it goes,” he continued, seating himself at the table; “but it has one grave defect — it is always cautious in the wrong place.”
He dipped his pen in the ink, placed the first slip of paper before him with a thump of his hand on the desk, cleared his throat, and began. He wrote with great noise and rapidity, in so large and bold a hand, and with such wide spaces between the lines, that he reached the bottom of the slip in not more than two minutes certainly from the time when he started at the top. Each slip as he finished it was paged, and tossed over his shoulder out of his way on the floor. When his first pen was worn out, THAT went over his shoulder too, and he pounced on a second from the supply scattered about the table. Slip after slip, by dozens, by fifties, by hundreds, flew over his shoulders on either side of him till he had snowed himself up in paper all round his chair. Hour after hour passed — and there I sat watching, there he sat writing. He never stopped, except to sip his coffee, and when that was exhausted, to smack his forehead from time to time. One o’clock struck, two, three, four — and still the slips flew about all round him; still the untiring pen scraped its way ceaselessly from top to bottom of the page, still the white chaos of paper rose higher and higher all round his chair. At four o’clock I heard a sudden splutter of the pen, indicative of the flourish with which he signed his name. “Bravo!” he cried, springing to his feet with the activity of a young man, and looking me straight in the face with a smile of superb triumph.
“Done, Mr. Hartright!” he announced with a self-renovating thump of his fist on his broad breast. “Done, to my own profound satisfaction — to YOUR profound astonishment, when you read what I have written. The subject is exhausted: the man — Fosco — is not. I proceed to the arrangement of my slips — to the revision of my slips — to the reading of my slips — addressed emphatically to your private ear. Four o’clock has just struck. Good! Arrangement, revision, reading, from four to five. Short snooze of restoration for myself from five to six. Final preparations from six to seven. Affair of agent and sealed letter from seven to eight. At eight, en route. Behold the programme!”
He sat down cross-legged on the floor among his papers, strung them together with a bodkin and a piece of string — revised them, wrote all the titles and honours by which he was personally distinguished at the head of the first page, and then read the manuscript to me with loud theatrical emphasis and profuse theatrical gesticulation. The reader will have an opportunity, ere long, of forming his own opinion of the document. It will be sufficient to mention here that it answered my purpose.
He next wrote me the address of the person from whom he had hired the fly, and handed me Sir Percival’s letter. It was dated from Hampshire on the 25th of July, and it announced the journey of “Lady Glyde” to London on the 26th. Thus, on the very day (the 25th) when the doctor’s certificate declared that she had died in St. John’s Wood, she was alive, by Sir Percival’s own showing, at Blackwater — and, on the day after, she was to take a journey! When the proof of that journey was obtained from the flyman, the evidence would be complete.
“A quarter-past five,” said the Count, looking at his watch. “Time for my restorative snooze. I personally resemble Napoleon the Great, as you may have remarked, Mr. Hartright — I also resemble that immortal man in my power of commanding sleep at will. Excuse me one moment. I will summon Madame Fosco, to keep you from feeling dull.”
Knowing as well as he did, that he was summoning Madame Fosco to ensure my not leaving the house while he was asleep, I made no reply, and occupied myself in tying up the papers which he had placed in my possession.
The lady came in, cool, pale, and venomous as ever. “Amuse Mr. Hartright, my angel,” said the Count. He placed a chair for her, kissed her hand for the second time, withdrew to a sofa, and, in three minutes, was as peacefully and happily asleep as the most virtuous man in existence.
Madame Fosco took a book from the table, sat down, and looked at me, with the steady vindictive malice of a woman who never forgot and never forgave.
“I have been listening to your conversation with my husband,” she said. “If I had been in HIS place — I would have laid you dead on the hearthrug.”
With those words she opened her book, and never looked at me or spoke to me from that time till the time when her husband woke.
He opened his eyes and rose from the sofa, accurately to an hour from the time when he had gone to sleep.
“I feel infinitely refreshed,” he remarked. “Eleanor, my good wife, are you all ready upstairs? That is well. My little packing here can be completed in ten minutes — my travelling-dress assumed in ten minutes more. What remains before the agent comes?” He looked about the room, and noticed the cage with his white mice in it. “Ah!” he cried piteously, “a last laceration of my sympathies still remains. My innocent pets! my little cherished children! what am I to do with them? For the present we are settled nowhere; for the present we travel incessantly — the less baggage we carry the better for ourselves. My cockatoo, my canaries, and my little mice — who will cherish them when their good Papa is gone?”
He walked about the room deep in thought. He had not been at all troubled about writing his confession, but he was visibly perplexed and distressed about the far more important question of the disposal of his pets. After long consideration he suddenly sat down again at the writing-table.
“An idea!” he exclaimed. “I will offer my canaries and my cockatoo to this vast Metropolis — my agent shall present them in my name to the Zoological Gardens of London. The Document that describes them shall be drawn out on the spot.”
He began to write, repeating the words as they flowed from his pen.
“Number one. Cockatoo of transcendent plumage: attraction, of himself, to all visitors of taste. Number two. Canaries of unrivalled vivacity and intelligence: worthy of the garden of Eden, worthy also of the garden in the Regent’s Park. Homage to British Zoology. Offered by Fosco.”
The pen spluttered again, and the flourish was attached to his signature.
“Count! you have not included the mice,” said Madame Fosco
He left the table, took her hand, and placed it on his heart.
“All human resolution, Eleanor,” he said solemnly, “has its limits. MY limits are inscribed on that Document. I cannot part with my white mice. Bear with me, my angel, and remove them to their travelling cage upstairs.”
“Admirable tenderness!” said Madame Fosco, admiring her husband, with a last viperish look in my direction. She took up the cage carefully, and left the room.
The Count looked at his watch. In spite of his resolute assumption of composure, he was getting anxious for the agent’s arrival. The candles had long since been extinguished, and the sunlight of the new morning poured into the room. It was not till five minutes past seven that the gate bell rang, and the agent made his appearance. He was a foreigner with a dark beard.
“Mr. Hartright — Monsieur Rubelle,” said the Count, introducing us. He took the agent (a foreign spy, in every line of his face, if ever there was one yet) into a corner of the room, whispered some directions to him, and then left us together. “Monsieur Rubelle,” as soon as we were alone, suggested with great politeness that I should favour him with his instructions. I wrote two lines to Pesca, authorising him to deliver my sealed letter “to the bearer,” directed the note, and handed it to Monsieur Rubelle.
The agent waited with me till his employer returned, equipped in travelling costume. The Count examined the address of my letter before he dismissed the agent. “I thought so!” he said,