It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 96

CHAPTER XLV.

IN a low public outside the town--in a back room--with their arms on the table and their low foreheads nearly touching, sat whispering two men--types. One had the deep-sunk, colorless eyes, the protruding cheek-bones, the shapeless mouth, and the broad chin good in itself but bad in the above connection; the other had the vulpine chin, and the fiendish eyebrows descending on the very nose in two sharp arches. Both had the restless eye, both the short-cropped hair, society's comment, congruous and auxiliary, though in itself faint by the side of habit's seal and Nature's.

A small north window dimly lighted the gloomy, uncouth cabin, and revealed the sole furniture--four chairs, too heavy to lift, too thick to break, and a table discolored with the stains of a thousand filthy debauches and dotted here and there with the fresh ashes of pipes and cigars.

In this appropriate frame behold two felons putting their heads together. By each felon's side smoked in a gla.s.s hot with heat and hotter with alcohol, the enemy of man. It would be difficult to give their dialogue, for they spoke in thieves' Latin. The substance was this: They had scent of a booty in a house that stood by itself three miles out of the town. But the servants were incorruptible, and they could not get access to inspect the premises, which were intricate. Now your professional burglar will no more venture upon unexplored premises than a good seaman will run into an unknown channel without pilot, soundings or chart. It appeared from the dialogue that the two men were acquainted with a party who knew these premises, having been more than once inside them with his master.

The more rugged one objected to this party. "He is no use, he has turned soft. I have heard him refuse a dozen good plants the last month.

Besides, I don't want a canting son of a gun for my pal--ten to one if he don't turn tail and perhaps split."

N. B.--All this not in English, but in thieve's cant, with an oath or a nasty expression at every third word. The sentences measled with them.

"You don't know how to take him," replied he of the Mephistopheles eye-brow. "He won't refuse me."

"Why not?"

"He is an old pal of mine, and I never found the thing I could not persuade him to. He does not know how to say me nay--you may bully him and queer him till all is blue, and he won't budge, and that is the lay you have been upon with him. Now I shall pull a long face--make up a story--take him by his soft bit--tell him I can't get on without him, and patter old lang syne to him. Then we'll get a fiddle and lots of whisky; and when we have had a reel and he has shaken his foot on the floor and drank a gill or two, you will see him thaw, and then you leave him to me and don't put in your jaw to spoil it. If we get him it will be all right--he is No. 1; his little finger has seen more than both our carca.s.ses put together."

CHAPTER XLVI.

FOUR days after this, mephistopheles with a small m and brutus with a little b sat again in the filthy little cabin where men hatch burglaries--but this time the conference wore an air of expectant triumph.

"Didn't I tell you?"

"You didn't do it easy."

"No, I had almost to go on my knees to him."

"He isn't worth so much trouble."

"He is worth it ten times over. Look at this," and the speaker produced a plan of the premises they were plotting against. "Could you have done this?"

"I don't say I could."

"Could any man you know have done it? See here is every room and every door and window and pa.s.sage put down, and what sort of keys and bolts and fastenings to each."

"How came he to know so much; he never was in the house but twice."

"A top-sawyer like him looks at everything with an eye to business. If he was in a church he'd twig the candlesticks and the fastenings, while the rest were mooning into the parson's face--he can't help it."

"Well, he may be a top-sawyer, but I don't like him. See how loth he was, and, when he did agree, how he turned to and drank as if he would drown his pluck before it could come to anything."

"Wait till you see him work. He will shake all that nonsense to blazes when he finds himself out under the moon with the swag on one side and the gallows on the other."

To go back a little. Mr. Miles did not return at the appointed day; and Robinson, who had no work to do, and could not amuse himself without money, p.a.w.ned Mr. Eden's ring. He felt ashamed and sorrowful, but not so much so as the first time.

This evening, as he was strolling moodily through the suburbs, a voice hailed him in tones of the utmost cordiality. He looked up and there was an old pal, with whom he had been a.s.sociated in many a merry bout and pleasant felony; he had not seen the man for two years; a friendly gla.s.s was offered and accepted. Two girls were of the party, to oblige whom Robinson's old acquaintance sent for Blind Bill, the fiddler, and soon Robinson was dancing and shouting with the girls like mad--"High cut,"

"side cut," "heel and toe," "sailor's fling," and the double shuffle.

He did not leave till three in the morning, and after a promise to meet the same little party again next evening--to dance and drink and drive away dull care.

CHAPTER XLVII.

ON a certain evening some days later, the two men whose faces were definitions sat on a bench outside that little public in the suburbs--one at the end of a clay-pipe, the other behind a pewter mug.

It was dusk.

"He ought to be here soon," said the one into whose forehead holes seemed dug and little bits of some vitreous substance left at the bottom. "Well, mate," cried he harshly, "what do you want that you stick to us so tight?" This was addressed to a peddler who had been standing opposite showing the contents of his box with a silent eloquence. Now this very asperity made the portable shopman say to himself, "wants me out of the way--perhaps buy me out." So he stuck where he was, and exhibited his wares.

"We don't want your gim-cracks," said mephistopheles quietly.

The man eyed his customers and did not despair. "But, gents," said he, "I have got other things besides gim-cracks; something that will suit you if you can read."

"Of course we can read," replied sunken-eyes haughtily; and in fact they had been too often in jail to escape this accomplishment.

The peddler looked furtively in every direction; and after this precaution pressed a spring and brought a small drawer out from the bottom of his pack. The two rogues winked at one another. Out of the drawer the peddler whipped a sealed packet.

"What is it?" asked mephistopheles, beginning to take an interest.

"Just imported from England," said the peddler, a certain pomp mingling with his furtive and mysterious manner.

"---- England," was the other's patriotic reply.

"And translated from the French."

"That is better! but what is it?"

"Them that buy it--they will see!"

"Something flash?"

"Rather, I should say."

"Is there plenty about the women in it?"

The trader answered obliquely.

"What are we obliged to keep it dark for?"--the other put in, "Why of course there is."

"Well!" said sunken-eyes affecting carelessness. "What do you want for it? Got sixpence, Bill?"

"I sold the last to a gentleman for three-and-sixpence. But as this is the last I've got--say half a crown."

Sunken-eyes swore at the peddler.