This particular friend was a solicitor named Vark, who carried on a shady business, in a shady manner, for shady clients. His name--as he declared himself--proved him to be of Polish descent; but it was commonly reported in the neighborhood that Vark was made to rhyme with shark, as emblematic of the estimation in which he was held. He was hated only one degree less than Jacob, and the two,--connected primarily as lawyer and client,--later on, had struck up a mistrustful friendship by reason of their mutual reputation and isolation. Neither one believed in the other; each tried to swindle on his own account, and never succeeded; yet the two met nightly and talked over their divers rascalities in the dingy parlor, with a confidence begotten by an intimate knowledge of each other's character. The reputations of both were so bad that the one did not dare to betray the other. Only on this basis is honor possible among thieves.
Late one foggy November night Jacob was seated with his crony over a pinched little fire which burnt feebly in a rusty iron grate. The old pawnbroker was boiling some gruel, and Vark, with his own private bottle of gin beside him, was drinking a wineglass of it, mixed sparingly with water. Mr. Dix supplied this latter beverage, as it cost nothing, but Vark--on an understanding which dated from the commencement of their acquaintance--always brought his own liquor. A gutterring candle in a silver candlestick--a pawned article--was placed on the deal table, and gave forth a miserable light. The fog from without had percolated into the room, so that the pair sat in a kind of misty atmosphere, hardly illuminated by the farthing dip. Such discomfort, such squalor, was only possible in a penurious establishment like that of Jacob.
Vark was a little, lean, wriggling creature, more like a worm than a man made in the image of his Creator. He had a sharp nose, a pimply face, and two shifty, fishy eyes, green in hue like those of a cat. His dress was of rusty black, with a small--very small--display of linen; and he rubbed his hands together with a cringing bow every time Jacob croaked out a remark between his coughs. Mr. Dix coughed in a rich but faded dressing-gown, the relic of some dandy of the Regency; and every paroxysm threatened to shake his frail form to pieces. But the ancient was wonderfully tough, and clung to life with a kind of desperate courage--though Heaven only knows what attraction the old villain found in his squalid existence. This tenacity was not approved of by Vark, who had made Jacob's will, and now wished his client to die, so that he, as executor, might have the fingering of the wealth which Dix was reported to possess. The heir to these moneys was missing, and Vark was determined that he should never be found. Meanwhile, with many schemes in his head, he cringed to Jacob, and watched him cough over his gruel.
"Oh, dear, dear!" sighed Mr. Vark, speaking of his client in the third person, as he invariably did, "how bad Mr. Dix's cough is to-night! Why doesn't he try a taste of gin to moisten his throat?"
"Can't afford it!" croaked Jacob, pouring the gruel into a bowl. "Gin's worth money, and money I ain't got. Make me a little present of a glass, Mr. Vark, just to show that you're glad of my company."
Vark complied very unwillingly with this request, and poured as little as he well could into the proffered bowl. "What an engaging man he is!" said the lawyer, smirking--"so convivial, so full of spirits!"
"Your spirits!" retorted Jacob, drinking his gruel.
"What wit!" cried Vark, slapping his thin knees. "It's better than Punch!"
"Gin-punch! gruel-punch!" said Dix, encouraged by this praise.
"He, he! I shall die with laughing! I've paid for worse than that at the theater!"
"More fool you!" growled Jacob, taking up the tongs. "You shouldn't pay for anything. Here, get out! I'm going to put out the fire. I ain't going to burn this expensive coal to warm you. And the candle's half-burnt too!" concluded Jacob, resentfully.
"I'm going--I'm going," said dark, slipping his bottle into his pocket. "But to leave this pleasant company--what a wrench!"
"Here, stop that stuff, you inkpot! Has my son answered that advertisement yet?"
"Mr. Dix's son hasn't sent a line to his sorrowing parent," returned the lawyer. "Oh, what a hard-hearted offspring!"
"You're right there, man," muttered Jacob, gloomily. "Jimmy's left me to die all alone, curse him!"
"Then why leave him your money?" said Vark, changing into the first person, as he always did when business was being discussed.
"Why, you fool?--'cause he's Hagar's son--the bad son of a good mother."
"Hagar Stanley--your wife--your gipsy wife! Hey, Mr. Dix?"
Jacob nodded. "A pure-blooded Romany. I met her when I was a Crocus."
"Crocus for Cheap Jack!" whined Vark; "the wit this man has!"
"She came along o' me to London when I set up here," continued Jacob, without heeding the interruption, "and town killed her; she couldn't breathe in bricks and mortar after the free air of the road. Dead--poor soul!--dead; and she left me Jimmy--Jimmy, who's left me."
"What a play of fancy---" began Vark; when, seeing from the fierce look of Jacob that compliments on the score of the dead wife were not likely to be well received, he changed his tone. "He'll spend your money, Mr. Dix."
"Let him! Hagar's dead, and when I die--let him."
"But, my generous friend, if you gave me more power as executor---"
"You'd take my money to yourself," interrupted Dix with irony. "Not if I know it, you shark! Your duty is to administer the estate by law for Jimmy. I pay you!"
"But so little!" whined Vark, rising; "if you---"
At this moment there came a sharp knock at the door of the shop, and the two villains, always expectant of the police, stared at one another, motionless with terror for the moment. Vark, who always took care of his skin, snatched up his hat and made for the back-door, whence, in the fog, he could gain his own house unquestioned and unseen. Like a ghost he vanished, leaving Jacob motionless until aroused by a repetition of the knock.
"Can't be peelers," he muttered, taking a pistol out of a cupboard, "but it might be thieves. Well, if it is---" He smiled grimly, and without finishing his sentence he shuffled along to the door, candle in hand. A third knock came, as the clock in the shop struck eleven.
"Who is there, so late?" demanded Jacob, sharply.
"I am--Hagar Stanley!"
With a cry of terror, Mr. Dix let the candle fall, and in the darkness dropped also. For the moment,--so much had his thoughts been running on the dead wife,--the unexpected mention of her name made him believe that she was standing rigid in her winding-sheet on the other side of the door. One frail partition between the living and the dead! It was terrible!
"The ghost of Hagar!" muttered Dix, white and shaking. "Why has she come out of her grave?--and so expensive it was; bricked; with a marble tombstone."
"Let me in! let me in, Mr. Dix!" cried the visitor, again rapping.
"She never called me by that name," said Jacob, reassured, and scrambling for the candle; then, having lighted it, he added aloud: "I don't know any one called Hagar Stanley."
"Open the door, and you will. I'm your wife's niece."
"Flesh and blood!" said the old man, fumbling at the lock--"I don't mind that."
He flung wide the door, and out of the fog and darkness a young girl of twenty years stepped into the shop. She was dressed in a dark red garment made of some coarse stuff, and over this she wore a short black cloak. Her hands were bare, and also her head, save for a scarlet handkerchief,