"A thousand thanks! yes, the business is the same--the file, the chisel, and knife." And he made a corresponding movement of his
hand as he mentioned each instrument.
"Hush!" said Longcluse, smiling, so that no one who did not hear him would have supposed there was so much cautious emphasis
in the word. "My good friend, remember there are details we talk of, you and I together, that are not to be mentioned so suitably in a place like this," and he pressed his hand on his wrist, and shook it gently.
"A thousand pardons! I am, I know, too careless, and let my tongue too often run before my caution. My wife, she says, 'You can't
wash your shirt but you must tell the world.' It is my weakness truly. She is a woman of extraordinary penetration."
Mr. Longcluse glanced from the corners of his eyes about the room. Perhaps he wished to ascertain whether his talk with this man, whom you would have taken to be little above the level of a French mechanic, had excited anyone's attention. But there was nothing to make him think so.
"Now, Pierre, my friend, you must win some money upon this match--do you see? And you won't deny me the pleasure of putting down your stake for you; and, if you win, you shall buy something pretty for Madame--and, win or lose, I shall think it friendly of you after so many years, and like you the better."
"Monsieur is too good," he said with effusion.
"Now look. Do you see that fat Jew over there on the front bench--you can't mistake him--with the velvet waistcoat all in wrinkles, and the enormous lips, who talks to every second person who passes?"
"I see perfectly, Monsieur."
"He is betting three to one upon Markham. You must take his offer, and back Hood. I'm told he'll win. Here are ten pounds, you may as well make them thirty. Don't say a word. Our English custom is to tip, as we say, our friend's sons at school, and to make presents to everybody, as often as we like. Now there--not a word." He quietly slipped into his hand a little rouleau of ten pounds in gold. "If you say one word you wound me," he continued. "But, good Heaven! my dear friend, haven't you a breast-pocket?"
11
"No, Monsieur; but this is quite safe. I was paid, only five minutes before I came here, fifteen pounds in gold, a cheque of forty-four
pounds, and----"
"Be silent. You may be overheard. Speak here in a very low tone, as I do. And do you mean to tell me that you carry all that money in your coat pocket?"
"But in a pocket-book, Monsieur."
"All the more convenient for the chevalier d'industrie," said Longcluse. "Stop. Pray don't produce it; your fate is, perhaps, sealed if
you do. There are gentlemen in this room who would hustle and rob you in the crowd as you get out; or, failing that, who, seeing that you are a stranger, would follow and murder you in the streets, for the sake of a twentieth part of that sum."
"Gabriel thought there would be none here but men distinguished," said Lebas, in some consternation. "Distinguished by the special attention of the police, some of them," said Longcluse.
"He! that is very true," said Monsieur Lebas--"very true, I am sure of it. See you that man there, Monsieur? Regard him for a mo-ment. The tall man, who leans with his shoulder to the metal pillar of the gallery. My faith! he has observed my steps and followed me. I thought he was a spy. But my friend he says 'No, that is a man of bad character, dismissed for bad practices from the police.' Aha! he has watched me sideways, with the corner of his eye. I will watch him with the corner of mine--ha, ha!"
"It proves, at all events, Lebas, that there are people here other than gentlemen and men of honest lives," said Longcluse. "But," said Lebas, brightening a little, "I have this weapon," producing a dagger from the same pocket.
"Put it back this instant. Worse and worse, my good friend. Don't you know that just now there is a police activity respecting foreigners, and that two have been arrested only yesterday on no charge but that of having weapons about their persons? I don't know what the devil you had best do."
"I can return to the Hill of Ludgate--eh?"
"Pity to lose the game; they won't let you back again," said Longcluse.
"What shall I do?" said Lebas, keeping his hand now in his pocket on his treasure.
Longcluse rubbed the tip of his finger a little over his eyebrow, thinking. "Listen to me," said Longcluse, suddenly. "Is your brother-in-law here?" "No, Monsieur."
"Well, you have some London friend in the room, haven't you?" "One--yes."
"Only be sure he is one whom you can trust, and who has a safe pocket."
"Oh, yes, Monsieur, entirely! and I saw him place his purse so," he said, touching his coat, over his heart, with his fingers.
"Well, now, you can't manage it here, under the gaze of the people; but--where is best? Yes--you see those two doors at opposite sides in the wall, at the far end of the room? They open into two parallel corridors leading to the hall, and a little way down there is a cross passage, in the middle of which is a door opening into a smoking-room. That room will be deserted now, and there, unseen, you can place your money and dagger in his charge."
"Ah, thank you a hundred thousand times, Monsieur!" answered Lebas. "I shall be writing to the Baron van Boeren to-morrow, and I
will tell him I have met Monsieur."
"Don't mind; how is the baron?" asked Longcluse.
12
"Very well. Beginning to be not so young, you know, and thinking of retiring. I will tell him his work has succeeded. If he demolishes, he also secures. If he sometimes sheds blood----"
"Hush!" whispered Longcluse, sternly.
"There is no one," murmured little Lebas, looking round, but dropping his voice to a whisper. "He also saves a neck sometimes from the blade of the guillotine."
Longcluse frowned, a little embarrassed. Lebas smiled archly. In a moment Longcluse's impatient frown broke into a mysterious smile that responded.
"May I say one word more, and make one request of Monsieur, which I hope he will not think very impertinent?" asked Monsieur
Lebas, who had just been on the point of taking his leave.
"It mayn't be in my power to grant it; but you can't be what you say--I am too much obliged to you--so speak quite freely," said
Longcluse.
So they talked a little more and parted, and Monsieur Lebas went on his way.
CHAPTER V.
A CATASTROPHE.
HE play has commenced. Longcluse, who likes and understands the game, sitting beside Richard Arden, is all eye. He is intensely ea-ger and delighted. He joins modestly in the clapping that now and then follows a stroke of extraordinary brilliancy. Now and then he whispers a criticism in Arden's ear. There are many vicissitudes in the game. The players have entered on the third hundred, and still "doubtful it stood." The excitement is extraordinary. The assembly is as hushed as if it were listening to a sermon, and, I am afraid, more attentive. Now, on a sudden, Hood scores a hundred and sixty-eight points in a single break. A burst of prolonged applause follows, and, during the clapping, in which he had at first joined, Longcluse says to Arden,--
"I can't tell you how that run of Hood's delights me. I saw a poor little friend of mine here before the play began--I had not seen him since I was little more than a boy--a Frenchman, a good-natured little soul, and I advised him to back Hood, and I have been trembling up to this moment. But I think he's safe now to win. Markham can't score this time. If he's in 'Queer Street,' as they whisper round the room, you'll find he'll either give a simple miss, or put himself into the pocket."
"Well, I'm sure I hope your friend will win, because it will put three hundred and eighty pounds into my pocket," said Richard Arden. And now silence was called, and the building became, in