第98章

I drove home, selected and marked my first series of readings, and drove back to Montagu Square, with a dozen works in a carpet-bag, the like of which, I firmly believe, are not to be found in the literature of any other country in Europe.I paid the cabman exactly his fare.He received it with an oath; upon which I instantly gave him a tract.If I had presented a pistol at his head, this abandoned wretch could hardly have exhibited greater consternation.He jumped up on his box, and, with profane exclamations of dismay, drove off furiously.Quite useless, I am happy to say! I sowed the good seed, in spite of him, by throwing a second tract in at the window of the cab.

The servant who answered the door--not the person with the cap-ribbons, to my great relief, but the footman--informed me that the doctor had called, and was still shut up with Lady Verinder.Mr.Bruff, the lawyer, had arrived a minute since and was waiting in the library.I was shown into the library to wait too.

Mr.Bruff looked surprised to see me.He is the family solicitor, and we had met more than once, on previous occasions, under Lady Verinder's roof.A man, I grieve to say, grown old and grizzled in the service of the world.A man who, in his hours of business, was the chosen prophet of Law and Mammon; and who, in his hours of leisure, was equally capable of reading a novel and of tearing up a tract.

`Have you come to stay here, Miss Clack?' he asked, with a look at my carpet-bag.

To reveal the contents of my precious bag to such a person as this would have been simply to invite an outburst of profanity.I lowered myself to his own level, and mentioned my business in the house.

`My aunt has informed me that she is about to sign her Will,' I answered.

`She has been so good as to ask me to be one of the witnesses.'

`Aye? aye? Well, Miss Clack, you will do.You are over twenty-one, and you have not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder's Will.'

Not the slightest pecuniary interest in Lady Verinder's Will.Oh, how thankful I felt when I heard that! If my aunt, possessed of thousands, had remembered poor Me, to whom five pounds is an object--if my name had appeared in the Will, with a little comforting legacy attached to it--my enemies might have doubted the motive which had loaded me with the choicest treasures of my library, and had drawn upon my failing resources for the prodigal expenses of a cab.Not the cruellest scoffer of them all could doubt now.Much better as it was! Oh, surely, surely, much better as it was!

I was aroused from these consoling reflections by the voice of Mr.Bruff.

My meditative silence appeared to weigh upon the spirits of this worldling, and to force him, as it were, into talking to me against his own will.

`Well, Miss Clack, what's the last news in the charitable circles? How is your friend Mr.Godfrey Ablewhite, after the mauling he got from the rogues in Northumberland Street? Egad! they're telling a pretty story about that charitable gentleman at my club!'

I had passed over the manner in which this person had remarked that I was more than twenty-one, and that I had no pecuniary interest in my aunt's Will.But the tone in which he alluded to dear Mr.Godfrey was too much for my forbearance.Feeling bound, after what had passed in my presence that afternoon, to assert the innocence of my admirable friend, whenever I found it called in question--I own to having also felt bound to include in the accomplishment of this righteous purpose, a stinging castigation in the case of Mr.Bruff.

`I live very much out of the world,' I said; `and I don't posses the advantage, sir, of belonging to a club.But I happen to know the story to which you allude; and I also know that a viler falsehood than that story never was told.'

`Yes, yes, Miss Clack--you believe in your friend.Natural enough.Mr.

Godfrey Ablewhite won't find the world in general quite so easy to convince as a committee of charitable ladies.Appearances are dead against him.

He was in the house when the Diamond was lost.And he was the first person in the house to go to London afterwards.Those are ugly circumstances, ma'am, viewed by the light of later events.'

I ought, I know, to have set him right before he went any further.Iought to have told him that he was speaking in ignorance of a testimony to Mr.Godfrey's innocence, offered by the only person who was undeniably competent to speak from a positive knowledge of the subject.Alas! the temptation to lead the lawyer artfully on to his own discomfiture was too much for me.I asked what he meant by `later events'--with an appearance of the utmost innocence.

`By later events, Miss Clack, I mean events in which the Indians are concerned,' proceeded Mr.Bruff, getting more and more superior to poor Me, the longer he went on.`What do the Indians do, the moment they are let out of the prison at Frizinghall? They go straight to London, and fix on Mr.Luker.What follows? Mr.Luker feels alarmed for the safety of "a valuable of great price," which he has got in the house.He lodges it privately (under a general description) in his banker's strong-room.Wonderfully clever of him: but the Indians are just as clever on their side.They have their suspicions that the "valuable of great price" is being shifted from one place to another; and they hit on a singularly bold and complete way of clearing those suspicions up.Whom do they seize and search? Not Mr.

Luker only--which would be intelligible enough--but Mr.Godfrey Ablewhite as well.Why? Mr.Ablewhite's explanation is, that they acted on blind suspicion, after seeing him accidentally speaking to Mr.Luker.Absurd!