“Give me your ’and, hold feller—drink—I loves a gentleman as is a gentleman to my ’art, I does,—and I’ll see you’ve summit to do as suits your abilities better than picking o’ hokum. Jerry Chessells’ your man, sir; or say I knows nothing about it. A five pound job if he’s a ha’penny—he up there, Jim, in Grosvenor Street, just on the Square.”
“He up there, just on the Cross, more like,” broke in the surveyor, who had recently had a touch of this Mr. Chessells quality.
“I say, Mr. Baggs,” said the first interlocutor, “there’s a fiver, and no mistake, if you nabs Chessells—ain’t there, Jim?”
There was a chorus of assent to this appeal that did not please me, for I read that Mat was helping me to what we know as a “sell.”
“But, suppose I tried, what’s the guarantee?”
“I give you my vird,” said Mat, proudly.
“Mat’s word! Unexceptionable security that, I should think,” said the surveyor, slyly.
“And, if very particular, you may throw in his honour,” said another, gravely.
“Ay, as an officer,” continued a third.
“And a gentleman,” concluded a fourth.
“Gentle fiddlestick!” interposed Mat, angrily. “I say the tin is down on the nail at Fixes and Swears, if you only kitches your man.”
“Kitches your min, eh?” cried the gaudy little Mr. Dives. “But it hain’t so easy to kitch ’im, though. He’s de cutest old fox in de beat. If I’ve ‘hater ’im once, I espose I ‘af fifty times. Ees’ like nuffing ‘sep de shidow vich foller you ven you ‘if been vawking. Ee’s halways deere, but you niver come hup vi’ ’im. I vince as neer kitched ’im as could be vid a Middlesex writ. ‘Ee vos comin’ down ‘Obo'n, but ven he sees me he toes no more but skip over to de Seety on te oder side, and ven he sees as ‘ow I ‘vis a-lookin’ arter ’im, I sawr ’im gip a penny to a leettle poy to go over to me, and vat you tink it vos to say? Vy—''Tin’t you vish as you may kitch me?’ I declare it vos.”
The anecdote preluded others, illustrative of the same adroitness; and at the end interested almost as much by the difficulties to be mastered as by the hope of achieving a share in the professional greatness I was bowing to about me, I consented that, among the hunting engagements of the ensuing week, I would undertake to answer for Mr. Chessells.
The next morning, having carefully gone over whatever information I had collected on the haunts, habits, and connections—the natural history—of the animal I was after, I dressed myself in a nearly new suit of habiliments hired for the occasion, and, duly armed with my warrant, sallied out to make my first acquaintance with his lair.
I found, as forewarned, that he was in the occupation of a large house in Grosvenor Street, carrying on business as a painter and decorator. The shop was in admirable order, fresh painted, simply but tastefully decorated, and—what surprised me—with no space that did not seem filled with the materials suited to his business. While asking, therefore, the respectable youth in charge some vague questions on price and terms, I found myself silently addressing another to myself,—namely, why my creditor, instead of taking the man’s body, had not tried to get the amount of his execution by suing out a fi. fa. against all the goods I saw before me. I remembered, indeed, that one of the anecdotes of the preceding evening talked of a levy which had failed to repay the sheriff’s expenses; but, with all I saw before me, this seemed to me a greater puzzle than the puzzle it was supposed to explain. A more detailed inspection, however, suggested to me a doubt whether the same process now would not be followed by the same result.
On asking to look at one of several rolls of rich velvet-and-gold papers which appeared to load the shelves, a specimen was brought down which did not exceed a few yards in length, and when I desired to look at the other rolls, I was told they were of the same pattern, and that if I had any orders Mr. Chessells would receive them upon the pattern before me—a bit of which, in an offhand manner, he offered to supply me with. The same sort of evasive answers were given in reference to a large looking-glass-frame, wrapped up in paper tastefully nosegayed at the corners and centres so as to give the effect of elaborate mouldings or carvings. And so, as my eye travelled from shelf to shelf, I found a beggarly account of empty boxes—or boxes which, like the closets of some of our friend’s domesticities, had only skeletons for tenants. The establishment, in short, belonged to one of those men of genius who, having to live on credit, find that their dependence is in the inverse ratio of their capital, or, what is worse, their celebrity; and so much of his fortune as lay in stock was, of a very truth, the creation of his own hand, consisting of the interesting phantasmagoria yclept “dummies”—those nest-eggs of Commerce which often provoke layings on the part of the old Cochin China which her wayward incredulity would otherwise withhold.
“Well,” I said, moodily, “I think that will do. I see you have enough for a large apartment.”
And I carelessly threw down the richly-tissued paper.
“All of the same pattern, sir, and Mr. Chessells has twice as much up-stairs.”
“Exactly. But I prefer arranging with himself.”
“He’s engaged, sir—on business, sir—but expected every instant. If you leave your name, he’ll call, sir, at any moment.”
I affected a fit of absence of mind, and the merciless youth again and again inflicted on me the same promise. Misunderstanding the proffer which it would not have been quite convenient to accept, I answered, carelessly:—
“Well, yes, I will call—say, to-morrow, as I am passing—say, eleven to-morrow, or, better still, twelve.”
And I turned to stalk out, when a voice, that might have been a parrot’s, from the neighbouring staircase rung out:—
“Polly! pretty Polly! Don’t you wish you may get it?”
I confess it, the interruption flurried me all the