'Now I tell you what,' says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, 'I am damned if I am a-going to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don't know the right time to stretch it out and put it on the arm that fired that shot?'
Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize. Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.
'The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know who's got 'em. I don't mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the packet?'
Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.
Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it as the same.
'What have you got to say next?' asks Mr. Bucket. 'Now, don't open your mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it.'
'I want five hundred pound.'
'No, you don't; you mean fifty,' says Mr. Bucket humorously.
It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.
'That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider (without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business,' says Mr. Bucket-Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head-'and you ask me to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it's an unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than that. Hadn't you better say two fifty?'
Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.
'Then,' says Mr. Bucket, 'let's hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time I've heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he was in all respects, as ever I come across!'
Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands, delivers himself as follows, 'My friends, we are now-Rachael, my wife, and I-in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No.
Then why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing, money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends.'
'You're a man of business, you are,' returns Mr. Bucket, very attentive, 'and consequently you're going on to mention what the nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn't do better.'
'Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love,' says Mr. Chadband with a cunning eye, 'proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!'
Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning smile.
'Since you want to know what we know,' says she, 'I'll tell you. I helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship's daughter. I was in the service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her ladyship, that the child was dead-she WAS very nearly so-when she was born. But she's alive, and I know her.' With these words, and a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word 'ladyship,' Mrs.
Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.
'I suppose now,' returns that officer, 'YOU will be expecting a twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?'
Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can 'offer' twenty pence.
'My friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there,' says Mr.
Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. 'What may YOUR game be, ma'am?'
Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook's Court in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby's peace.
There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, under the influence-no doubt-of Mr. Snagsby's suborning and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo, deceased; and they were 'all in it.' In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr.
Snagsby's son, 'as well as if a trumpet had spoken it,' and she followed Mr. Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down, and to piece suspicious circumstances together-and every circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr. Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr.
Guppy, and helped to turn up the circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually, by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial separation. All this, Mrs.
Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the mourner of the late Mr.
Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.
While this exordium is in hand-and it takes some time-Mr. Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind.
'Very good,' says Mr. Bucket. 'Now I understand you, you know, and being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this little matter,' again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the statement, 'can give it my fair and full attention. Now I won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall. It was so opposed to your interests.
That's what I look at.'
'We wanted to get in,' pleads Mr. Smallweed.
'Why, of course you wanted to get in,' Mr. Bucket asserts with cheerfulness; 'but for a old gentleman at your time of life-what I call truly venerable, mind you!-with his wits sharpened, as I have no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious!
You see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground,' says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.
'I only said I wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to Sir Leicester Dedlock,' returns Mr. Smallweed.
'That's it! That's where your temper got the better of you. Now, you keep it under another time and you'll make money by it. Shall I ring for them to carry you down?'
'When are we to hear more of this?' Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.
