I saw iron ladles, pans full of white sand, files with white metal left glittering in their teeth, molds of plaster of Paris, bags containing the same material in powder, a powerful machine with the name and use of which I was theoretically not unacquainted, white metal in a partially-fused state, bottles of aquafortis, dies scattered over a dresser, crucibles, sandpaper, bars of metal, and edged tools in plenty, of the strangest construction. I was not at all a scrupulous man, as the reader knows by this time; but when I looked at these objects, and thought of Alicia, I could not for the life of me help shuddering. There was not the least doubt about it, even after the little I had seen: the important chemical pursuits to which Doctor Dulcifer was devoting himself, meant, in plain English and in one word—Coining.
Did Alicia know what I knew now, or did she only suspect it?
Whichever way I answered that question in my own mind, I could be no longer at any loss for an explanation of her behavior in the meadow by the stream, or of that unnaturally gloomy, downcast look which overspread her face when her father's pursuits were the subject of conversation. Did I falter in my resolution to marry her, now that I had discovered what the obstacle was which had made mystery and wretchedness between us? Certainly not. I was above all prejudices. I was the least particular of mankind. I had no family affection in my way—and, greatest fact of all, I was in love. Under those circumstances what Rogue of any spirit would have faltered? After the first shock of the discovery was over, my resolution to be Alicia's husband was settled more firmly than ever.
There was a little round table in a corner of the room furthest from the door, which I had not yet examined. A feverish longing to look at everything within my reach—to penetrate to the innermost recesses of the labyrinth in which I had involved myself—consumed me. I went to the table, and saw upon it, ranged symmetrically side by side, four objects which looked like thick rulers wrapped up in silver paper. I opened the paper at the end of one of the rulers, and found that it was composed of half-crowns. I had closed the paper again, and was just raising my head from the table over which it had been bent, when my right cheek came in contact with something hard and cold. I started back—looked up—and confronted Doctor Dulcifer, holding a pistol at my right temple.
CHAPTER IX.
THE doctor (like me) had his shoes off. The doctor (like me) had come in without making the least noise. He cocked the pistol without saying a word. I felt that I was probably standing face to face with death, and I too said not a word. We two Rogues looked each other steadily and silently in the face—he, the mighty and prosperous villain, with my life in his hands: I, the abject and poor scamp, waiting his mercy.
It must have been at least a minute after I heard the click of the cocked pistol before he spoke.
'How did you get here?' he asked.
The quiet commonplace terms in which he put his question, and the perfect composure and politeness of his manner, reminded me a little of Gentleman Jones. But the doctor was much the more respectable-looking man of the two; his baldness was more intellectual and benevolent; there was a delicacy and propriety in the pulpiness of his fat white chin, a bland bagginess in his unwhiskered cheeks, a reverent roughness about his eyebrows and a fullness in his lower eyelids, which raised him far higher, physiognomically speaking, in the social scale, than my old prison acquaintance. Put a shovel-hat on Gentleman Jones, and the effect would only have been eccentric; put the same covering on the head of Doctor Dulcifer, and the effect would have been strictly episcopal.
'How did you get here?' he repeated, still without showing the least irritation.
I told him how I had got in at the second-floor window, without concealing a word of the truth. The gravity of the situation, and the sharpness of the doctor's intellects, as expressed in his eyes, made anything like a suppression of facts on my part a desperately dangerous experiment.
'You wanted to see what I was about up here, did you?' said he, when I had ended my confession. 'Do you know?'
The pistol barrel touched my cheek as he said the last words. I thought of all the suspicious objects scattered about the room, of the probability that he was only putting this question to try my courage, of the very likely chance that he would shoot me forthwith, if I began to prevaricate. I thought of these things, and boldly answered:
'Yes, I do know.'
He looked at me reflectively; then said, in low, thoughtful tones, speaking, not to me, but entirely to himself:
'Suppose I shoot him?'
I saw in his eye, that if I flinched, he would draw the trigger.
'Suppose you trust me?' I said, without moving a muscle.
'I trusted you, as an honest man, downstairs, and I find you, like a thief, up here,' returned the doctor, with a self-satisfied smile at the neatness of his own retort. 'No,' he continued, relapsing into soliloquy: 'there is risk every way; but the least risk perhaps is to shoot him.'
'Wrong,' said I. 'There are relations of mine who have a pecuniary interest in my life. I am the main condition of a contingent reversion in their favor. If I am missed, I shall be inquired after.' I have wondered since at my own coolness in the face of the doctor's pistol; but my life depended on my keeping my self-possession, and the desperate nature of the situation lent me a desperate courage.
'How do I know you are not lying?' he asked.
'Have I not spoken the truth, hitherto?'
Those words made him hesitate. He lowered the pistol slowly to his side. I began to breathe freely.
'Trust me,' I repeated. 'If you don't believe I would hold my tongue about what I have seen here, for your sake, you may be certain that I would for—'
'For my daughter's,' he interposed, with a sarcastic smile.
I bowed with all imaginable cordiality. The doctor waved his pistol in the air contemptuously.
'There are two ways of making you hold your tongue,' he said. 'The first is shooting you; the second is making a felon of you. On consideration, after what you have said, the risk in either case seems about equal. I am naturally a humane man; your family have done me no injury; I will not be the cause of their losing money; I won't take your
