The Trail of the Serpent

luggage consisted of a carpetbag and walking-stick, and whose light ditto was composed of a pocketbook and a silver pencil-case of protean construction, which was sometimes a pen, now and then a penknife, and very often a toothpick. These gentlemen came down to the steamer at the last moment, inspiring the minds of nervous passengers with supernatural and convulsive cheerfulness by the light and airy way in which they bade adieu to the comrades who had just looked round to see them start, and who made appointments with them for Christmas supper-parties, and booked bets with them for next year’s Newmarket first spring⁠—as if such things as shipwreck, peril by sea, heeling over Royal Georges, lost Presidents, with brilliant Irish comedians setting forth on their return to the land in which they had been so beloved and admired, never, never to reach the shore, were things that could not be. There were rosy-cheeked country lasses, going over to earn fabulous wages and marry impossibly rich husbands. There were the old people, who essayed this long journey on an element which they knew only by sight, in answer to the kind son’s noble letter, inviting them to come and share the pleasant home his sturdy arm had won far away in the fertile West. There were stout Irish labourers armed with pickaxe and spade, as with the best sword wherewith to open the great oyster of the world in these latter degenerate days. There was the distinguished American family, with ever so many handsomely dressed, spoiled, affectionate children clustering round papa and mamma, and having their own way, after the manner of transatlantic youth. There were, in short, all the people who usually assemble when a good ship sets sail for the land of dear brother Jonathan; but the Count de Marolles there was not.

No, decidedly, no Count de Marolles! There was a very quiet-looking Irish labourer, keeping quite aloof from the rest of his kind, who were sufficiently noisy and more than sufficiently forcible in the idiomatic portions of their conversation. There was this very quiet Irishman, leaning on his spade and pickaxe, and evidently bent on not going on board till the very last moment; and there was an elderly gentleman in a black coat, who looked rather like a Methodist parson, and who held a very small carpetbag in his hand; but there was no Count de Marolles; and what’s more, there was no Mr. Peters.

This latter circumstance made Augustus Darley very uneasy; but I regret to say that the Smasher wore, if anything, a look of triumph as the hands of the clocks about the quay pointed to three o’clock, and no Peters appeared.

“I knowed,” he said, with effusion⁠—“I knowed that cove wasn’t up to his business. I wouldn’t mind bettin’ the goodwill of my little crib in London agen sixpen’orth of coppers, that he’s a-standin’ at this very individual moment of time at a street-corner a mile off, makin’ signs to one of the Liverpool police-officers.”

The gentleman in the black coat standing before them turned round on hearing this remark, and smiled⁠—smiled very very faintly; but he certainly did smile. The Smasher’s blood, which was something like that of Lancaster, and distinguished for its tendency to mount, was up in a moment.

“I hope you find my conversation amusin’, old gent,” he said, with considerable asperity; “I came down here on purpose to put you in spirits, on account of bein’ grieved to see you always a-lookin’ as if you’d just come home from your own funeral, and the undertaker was a-dunnin’ you for the burial-fees.”

Gus trod heavily on his companion’s foot as a friendly hint to him not to get up a demonstration; and addressing the gentleman, who appeared in no hurry to resent the Smasher’s contemptuous animadversions, asked him when he thought the boat would start.

“Not for five or ten minutes, I dare say,” he answered. “Look there; is that a coffin they’re bringing this way? I’m rather shortsighted; be good enough to tell me if it is a coffin?”

The Smasher, who had the glance of an eagle, replied that it decidedly was a coffin; adding, with a growl, that he knowed somebody as might be in it, and no harm done to society.

The elderly gentleman took not the slightest notice of this gratuitous piece of information on the part of the left-handed gladiator; but suddenly busied himself with his fingers in the neighbourhood of his limp white cravat.

“Why, I’m blest,” cried the Smasher, “if the old baby ain’t at Peters’s game, a-talkin’ to nobody upon his fingers!”

Nay, most distinguished professor of the noble art of self-defence, is not that assertion a little premature? Talking on his fingers, certainly⁠—looking at nobody, certainly; but for all that, talking to somebody, and to a somebody who is looking at him; for, from the other side of the little crowd, the Irish labourer fixes his eyes intently on every movement of the grave elderly gentleman’s fingers, as they run through four or five rapid words; and Gus Darley, perceiving this look, starts in amazement, for the eyes of the Irish labourer are the eyes of Mr. Peters of the detective police.

But neither the Smasher nor Gus is to notice Mr. Peters unless Mr. Peters notices them. It is so expressed in the note, which Mr. Darley has at that very moment in his waistcoat pocket. So Gus gives his companion a nudge, and directs his attention to the smock-frock and the slouched hat in which the detective has hidden himself, with a hurried injunction to him to keep quiet. We are human at the best; ay, even when we are celebrated for our genius in the muscular science, and our well-known blow of the left-handed postman’s knock, or double auctioneer: and, if the sober truth must be told, the Smasher was sorry to recognize Mr. Peters in that borrowed garb. He didn’t want the dumb detective to arrest the Count de Marolles. He had never read Coriolanus,