'Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful sex is!' replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. 'I shall have the pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day-not forgetting Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty.'
'Five hundred!' exclaims Mr. Smallweed.
'All right! Nominally five hundred.' Mr. Bucket has his hand on the bell-rope. 'SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of myself and the gentleman of the house?' he asks in an insinuating tone.
Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, 'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it. Mr.
Tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own way, I haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways.
So it is, and such is life. The cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended.'
Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.
'The party to be apprehended is now in this house,' proceeds Mr.
Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising spirits, 'and I'm about to take her into custody in your presence.
Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir.
There'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I'll come back in the course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the apprehension at present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to last.'
Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters. Mademoiselle Hortense.
The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in his chair.
'I ask you pardon,' she mutters hurriedly. 'They tell me there was no one here.'
Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr.
Bucket. Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale.
'This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock,' says Mr. Bucket, nodding at her. 'This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks back.'
'What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?' returns mademoiselle in a jocular strain.
'Why, my angel,' returns Mr. Bucket, 'we shall see.'
Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face, which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, 'You are very mysterieuse. Are you drunk?'
'Tolerable sober, my angel,' returns Mr. Bucket.
'I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.
Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here.
What is the intention of this fool's play, say then?' mademoiselle demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her dark cheek beating like a clock.
Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.
'Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!' cries mademoiselle with a toss of her head and a laugh. 'Leave me to pass downstairs, great pig.' With a stamp of her foot and a menace.
'Now, mademoiselle,' says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, 'you go and sit down upon that sofy.'
'I will not sit down upon nothing,' she replies with a shower of nods.
'Now, mademoiselle,' repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration except with the finger, 'you sit down upon that sofy.'
'Why?'
'Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a foreigner if I can. If I can't, I must be rough, and there's rougher ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your head, to go and sit down upon that sofy.'
Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that something in her cheek beats fast and hard, 'You are a devil.'
'Now, you see,' Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, 'you're comfortable and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of your sense to do. So I'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this, don't you talk too much. You're not expected to say anything here, and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the less you PARLAY, the better, you know.' Mr. Bucket is very complacent over this French explanation.
Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid state, with her hands clenched-and her feet too, one might suppose-muttering, 'Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!'
'Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,' says Mr. Bucket, and from this time forth the finger never rests, 'this young woman, my lodger, was her ladyship's maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate against her ladyship after being discharged-'
'Lie!' cries mademoiselle. 'I discharge myself.'
'Now, why don't you take my advice?' returns Mr. Bucket in an impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. 'I'm surprised at the indiscreetness you commit. You'll say something that'll be used against you, you know. You're sure to come to it. Never you mind what I say till it's given in evidence. It is not addressed to you.'
'Discharge, too,' cries mademoiselle furiously, 'by her ladyship!
Eh, my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by remaining with a ladyship so infame!'
'Upon my soul I wonder at you!' Mr. Bucket remonstrates. 'I thought the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!'
'He is a poor abused!' cries mademoiselle. 'I spit upon his house, upon his name, upon his imbecility,' all of which she makes the carpet represent. 'Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb!
Oh, heaven! Bah!'
'Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock,' proceeds Mr. Bucket, 'this intemperate foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her time and trouble.'
'Lie!' cries mademoiselle. 'I ref-use his money all togezzer.'
'If you WILL PARLAY, you know,' says Mr. Bucket parenthetically,
'you must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer.'
'Lie!' cries mademoiselle. 'All lie!'
'The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased on former occasions-even threatening him, as the witness made out. If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the
