I get for having humbled my spirit— such a spirit as mine—to earn a livelihood, is it?”
He got up from his chair, and kicked it away indignantly.
“And such a livelihood too! When there are hundreds of men, not fit to hold a candle to me, rolling in carriages and living on their fortunes. Upon my soul it's a nice world!”
His eyes encountered Jonas, who looked earnestly towards him, and moved his lips as if he were whispering.
“Eh?” said Slyme.
Jonas glanced at the attendant whose back was towards him, and made a clumsy motion with his bound hands towards the door.
“Humph!” said Slyme, thoughtfully. “I couldn't hope to disgrace him into anything when you have shot so far ahead of me though. I forgot that.”
Jonas repeated the same look and gesture.
“Jack!” said Slyme.
“Hallo!” returned his man.
“Go down to the door, ready for the coach. Call out when it comes. I'd rather have you there. Now then,” he added, turning hastily to Jonas, when the man was gone. “What's the matter?”
Jonas essayed to rise.
“Stop a bit,” said Slyme. “It's not so easy when your wrists are tight together. Now then! Up! What is it?”
“Put your hand in my pocket. Here! The breast pocket, on the left!” said Jonas.
He did so; and drew out a purse.
“There's a hundred pound in it,” said Jonas, whose words were almost unintelligible; as his face, in its pallor and agony, was scarcely human.
Slyme looked at him; gave it into his hands; and shook his head.
“I can't. I daren't. I couldn't if I dared. Those fellows below—”
“Escape's impossible,” said Jonas. “I know it. One hundred pound for only five minutes in the next room!”
“What to do?” he asked.
The face of his prisoner as he advanced to whisper in his ear, made him recoil involuntarily. But he stopped and listened to him. The words were few, but his own face changed as he heard them.
“I have it about me,” said Jonas, putting his hands to his throat, as though whatever he referred to were hidden in his neckerchief. “How should you know of it? How could you know? A hundred pound for only five minutes in the next room! The time's passing. Speak!”
“It would be more—more creditable to the family,” observed Slyme, with trembling lips. “I wish you hadn't told me half so much. Less would have served your purpose. You might have kept it to yourself.”
“A hundred pound for only five minutes in the next room! Speak!” cried Jonas, desperately.
He took the purse. Jonas, with a wild unsteady step, retreated to the door in the glass partition.
“Stop!” cried Slyme, catching at his skirts. “I don't know about this. Yet it must end so at last. Are you guilty?”
“Yes!” said Jonas.
“Are the proofs as they were told just now?”
“Yes!” said Jonas.
“Will you—will you engage to say a—a Prayer, now, or something of that sort?” faltered Slyme.
Jonas broke from him without replying, and closed the door between them.
Slyme listened at the keyhole. After that, he crept away on tiptoe, as far off as he could; and looked awfully towards the place. He was roused by the arrival of the coach, and their letting down the steps.
“He's getting a few things together,” he said, leaning out of window, and speaking to the two men below, who stood in the full light of a street-lamp. “Keep your eye upon the back, one of you, for form's sake.”
One of the men withdrew into the court. The other, seating himself self on the steps of the coach, remained in conversation with Slyme at the window who perhaps had risen to be his superior, in virtue of his old propensity (one so much lauded by the murdered man) of being always round the corner. A useful habit in his present calling.
“Where is he?” asked the man.
Slyme looked into the room for an instant and gave his head a jerk as much as to say, “Close at hand. I see him.”
“He's booked,” observed the man.
“Through,” said Slyme.
They looked at each other, and up and down the street. The man on the coach-steps took his hat off, and put it on again, and whistled a little.
“I say! He's taking his time!” he remonstrated.
“I allowed him five minutes,” said Slyme. “Time's more than up, though. I'll bring him down.”
He withdrew from the window accordingly, and walked on tiptoe to the door in the partition. He listened. There was not a sound within. He set the candles near it, that they might shine through the glass.
It was not easy, he found, to make up his mind to the opening of the door. But he flung it wide open suddenly, and with a noise; then retreated. After peeping in and listening again, he entered.
He started back as his eyes met those of Jonas, standing in an angle of the wall, and staring at him. His neckerchief was off; his face was ashy pale.
“You're too soon,” said Jonas, with an abject whimper. “I've not had time. I have not been able to do it. I— five minutes more—two minutes more!—only one!”
Slyme gave him no reply, but thrusting the purse upon him and forcing it back into his pocket, called up his men.
He whined, and cried, and cursed, and entreated them, and struggled, and submitted, in the same breath, and had no power to stand. They got him away and into the coach, where they put him on a seat; but he soon fell moaning down among the straw at the bottom, and lay there.
The two men were with him. Slyme being on the box with the driver; and they let him lie. Happening to pass a fruiterer's on their way; the door of which was open, though the shop was by this time shut; one of them remarked how faint the peaches smelled.
The other assented at the moment, but presently stooped down in quick alarm, and looked at the prisoner.
“Stop the coach! He has poisoned himself! The smell comes from this bottle in his hand!”
The hand had shut upon it tight. With that rigidity of grasp with which no living man, in the full strength and energy of life, can clutch a prize he has won.
They dragged him out into the dark street; but jury, judge, and hangman, could have done no more, and could do nothing now. Dead, dead, dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
IN WHICH THE TABLES ARE TURNED, COMPLETELY UPSIDE DOWN
Old Martin's cherished projects, so long hidden in his own breast, so frequently in danger of abrupt disclosure through the bursting forth of the indignation he had hoarded up during his residence with Mr Pecksniff, were retarded, but not beyond a few hours, by the occurrences just now related. Stunned, as he had been at first by the intelligence conveyed to him through Tom Pinch and John Westlock, of the supposed manner of his brother's death; overwhelmed as he was by the subsequent narratives of Chuffey and Nadgett, and the forging of that chain of circumstances ending in the death of Jonas, of which catastrophe he was immediately informed; scattered as his purposes and hopes were for the moment, by the crowding in of all these incidents between him and his end; still their very intensity and the tumult of their assemblage nerved him to the rapid and unyielding execution of his
