 A Mystery with a Moral of the Lock and Key Library. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, read by Sharifa Malchem. The Lock and Key Library. Edited by Julian Harthorn. A Mystery with a Moral by Lauren Stern. Introduction The next mystery story is like no other in these volumes. The editor's defence lies in the plea that Lauren Stern is not like other writers of English. He is certainly one of the very greatest. Yet nowadays he is generally unknown. His rollicking frankness, his audacious unconventionality, are enough to account forth neglect. Even the easy mannered England of 1760 opened its eyes in horror when Tristram Shandy appeared. A most unclerical clergyman, the public pronounced, the wrecked of Sutton and Preventary of York. Besides, his style was rambling to his last decree, plot-concerned him least of all authors of fiction. For instance, it is more than doubtful that a whimsical person really intended a moral to be read into the adventures of a sentimental journey that follow him these pages. He used to declare that he never intended anything. He never knew whether his pen was leading. The rash implement, once in hand, was likely to fly with him from Yorkshire to Italy, or to Paris, or across the road to Angothobes, and what could the helpless also do but improve each occasion? So here is one such occasion, thus improved, by disjointed sequels, heedless one would say, and yet glittering with the unreturnable thrust of subtle wit, or softening with simple emotion, like a thousand immortal passages of this random philosopher. Even the slightest turns of Stern's pen bear inspiration, no less a critic than the severe haslet or satisfied, that his works consist only of brilliant passages. And because the editors of the present volumes found added to the mystery not only a solution, but an application of worldly wisdom and a contrast in Stern's best vein of quiet happiness, they have felt emboldened to ascribe the passage, a mystery with a moral. As regards the application Stern knew whereof he wrote, he sought the South of France for health in 1762, and was run after, and fated by the most brilliant circles of Pro-Region literatures. This foreign surgeon failed to cure his long-complained, but suggested the idea to him of the rambling and charming sentimental journey. Only three weeks after its publication, on March 18, 1768, Stern died alone in his London lodgings. Despite of all that Mart is genius, his work has lived and will live, if only for the exquisite literary art which ever made great things out of little. The editor. A mystery with a moral. Pro-Region experience of Parson Yorick on his sentimental journey. A riddle. I remained at the gate of the hotel for some time, looking at everyone who passed by, and forming conjectures upon them, till my attention got fixed upon a single object which confounded all kind of reasoning upon him. It was a tall figure of a philosophic, serious adult look, which passed and repassed it daily along the street, making a turn of about sixty paces on each side of the gate of the hotel. The man was about fifty-two, had a small cane under his arm, was dressed in a dark drab collet coat, waistcoat and breeches, which seemed to have seen some year's service. They were still clean, and there was a little on being found out by William Makepeace Thackeray of the Lock and Key Library. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, read by Shaleefa Malikiam. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Hawthorne. On being found out by William Makepeace Thackeray. At the close, let us say, of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remembered the wicyker of a master ordering as all one night to march into a little garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one by one into a till or hen house. I was but a tender little thing, just put into short clothes, and can't exactly say whether the house was for tills or hens, and in that house to put our hens into a sack which stood on a bench, a can of burning beside it. I put my hand into the sack, my hand came out quite black, I went and joined the other boys in the schoolroom, and all their hens were black too. By reason of my tender age, and there are some critics who I hope will be satisfied by my acknowledging, that I am a hundred and fifty-six next birthday, I could not understand what was the meaning of this night excursion, this candle, this till house, this back of suit. I think we lesser boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We came then, and showed our little hens to the master, washed them or not, most probably I should say not, and so went bewildered back to bed. Something had been stolen in the school that day, and Mr Weisaker, having read in a book of an ingenious method, of finding out a thief by making him put his hand into a sack, which if guilty the rogue would shirk from doing, all we boys were subjected to the trial, goodness knows what the lost object was or who stole it, we all had black hens to show the master, and the thief, whoever he was, was not found out that time. I wonder if the rascal is alive, an elderly scoundrel he must be by this time, and a horny old hypocrite to whom an old school fellow present his kindness regard, parenthetically remarking what a dreadful place that private school was, called, jailblains, bad dinners, not enough fixtures, and caning awful. Are you alive still, I say, you nameless villain who escaped discovery on that day of crime? I hope you have escaped often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you and me, my man, that we are not found out in all our picadillos, and that our backs can slip away from the mass and the cane. Just consider what life would be if every rogue was found out, and flocked core and popular. What a butchery! What an indecency! What an endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good friend mealy-mouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church? When there, do you say, or do you not, that you are a miserable sinner, and saying so, do you believe or disbelieve it? If you are a miserable sinner, don't you deserve correction? And aren't you grateful if you are to be let off? I say again, what a blessed thing it is, that we are not all found out. Just picture to yourself every body who does wrong being found out, and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being whipped, and then the assistants, and then the headmaster, Dr. Bedford, let us call him. Fancy the provisional being tied up, having previously super-intended the correction of the whole army. After the young gentlemen have had their turn for the fault exercises, Fancy Dr. Lincolson being taken up for a certain fault in his assay and review. After the clergyman has cried his pachavi, suppose we ho-stop a bishop, and give him a couple of dozen. I see my Lord Bishop of Double Gluster sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend bench. After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the minister who appointed him? My Lord Kingwarden, it is painful to have to use personal correction to a boy of your age, but really, sister Tannum Carnifix. The butchery is too horrible, the hand drops powerless appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and rendish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again, and protest my dear brethren against our having our desserts. The fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough, but imagine all the women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and I have the honour to move. Is it not a mercy that many of these fair criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered? There is Mrs. Longbow, who is for ever practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows too, when you meet her you don't call her a liar, and charge her with the wickedness she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman and a model in society. There is no use in saying what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter, what a little haughty brute it is, and yet we know stories about her which are not altogether addifying. I say, it is best for the sake of the good that a bad should not all be found out. You don't want your children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so handsome and whom they admire so. Army, what would life be if we were all found out and punished for all our faults? Jack Ketch would be impermanence, and then who would hang Jack Ketch? They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. I have heard on authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is wiser. That terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he maintained were quite common, and was scarcely ever found out. A man, for instance, comes home to his wife and— But I pause. I know that this magazine has a very large circulation. Editors note, the Corn Hill. End of editors note. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands—why not a million of people at once? Well say a million read it. And among these countless readers I might be teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found out. Some find of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will not then tell this easy and simple way of murder as communicated to me by a most respectable party and the confidence of private intercourse. Suppose some gentle reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt. It seems to me almost infallible, and come to grieve in consequence and be found out and hanged. Should I ever pardon myself for having been the means of doing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers? The prescription whereof I speak—that is to say, whereof I don't speak—shall be buried in this bosom. No. I am a humane man. I'm not one of your bluebirds, to go and say to my wife, My dear, I'm going away for a few days to brighten. Here are all the keys of the house. You may open every door in closet, except the one at the end of the oak room opposite the fireplace with the little bronze shakes beyond the mantelpiece or what not. I don't say this to a woman, unless to be sure I want to get rid of her, because, after such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the closet at all. I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom I love, but who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's way. You toss up your hair, dear angel, drop on the ground with your lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, O snere, you don't know the depth of woman's feeling. The loft is gone of all deceit, the entire absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel us so. Adelia, dear, dear, Adelia, it is because I fancy I do know something about you. Not all, mind. No, no. No man knows that. Ah, my bride, my poverty shoes, in fact, whatever name you like, bubble of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my darkling life, and joy of my dungeon's existence. It is because I do know a little about you, that I conclude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my key in my pocket. You take away that closet key, then, and the house key. You lock Delia in. You keep her out of harm's way and getting, and so she never can be found out. And yet, by little strange accidents and coincidence, how we are being found out every day. You remember that old story of the Abbey Kakatos, who told the company at supper one night, how the first confession he ever received was, from a murderer, let us say. Presently enters to supper, the marquis he crocked me then. But some blue abbey, says the brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of snuff. Are you here? Gentlemen and ladies, I was the Abbey's first penitent, and I made him a confession which I promise you astonished him. To be sure, how clearly things are found out. Here is an instance. Only the other day I was writing him these roundabout papers about a certain man whom I facetiously called bags, and who had abused me to my friends, who, of course, told me. Shortly after that paper was published, another friend, Sax, let us call him, scalls fiercely at me as I am sitting in perfect good humour at the club, and passes on without speaking. A cut? A curl? Sax thinks it is about him that I was writing. Whereas upon my honour and conscience I never had him once in my mind, and was pointing my moral from quite another man. But don't you see by this wrath of the guilty conscience, Sax, that he had been abusing me too. He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused. He has winced when nobody thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap out, and, madly, butting and japing, behold, my friend rushes out to put his head into it. Never mind, Sax, you are found out, but I bear you no malice, my man. And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful and odious, and cruel and mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a paltrune, let us say, with fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabinet and women, brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two with it, reg of the images which I break after shooting-calorie, and pass among my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor dragon. Ah me, suppose some brisk little chap steps up and gives me caning in St. James Street, with all the heads of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation has gone. I frighten no men more. My nose is pulled by whiff of snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was lily-liver, and expected that I should be found out some day. That certainty of being found out must haunt and depress many a bold, regidaceous spirit. Let us say it is a clergyman, who can pump copious flots of tears out of his own eyes, and those of his audience. He thinks to himself, I am but a poor, swindling, chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted several women whom I have promised to marry. I don't know whether I believe what I preach, and I know I have stolen the very sermon over which I have been snivelling. Have they found me out?" says he, as his head drops down on the cushion. Then your writer poed historian novelist or what-not. The beacon says that Jones's work is one of the first order. The Lamb declares that Jones's strategy surpasses every work since the days of him of Avon. The Comet asserts that day's life of goody-two-shoes is a Greek text omitted, a noble and enduring monument to the fame of that admirable Englishwoman, and so forth. And then Jones knows that he has lent the critic of the beacon five pounds, that his publisher has a half-share and the lamp, and that a cornered comes repeatedly to dine with him. It is all very well. Jones is immortal until he is found out, and then down comes the extinguisher, and the immortal is dead and buried. The idea, dear Zire, of discovery must haunt many a man, and make him uneasy, as trumpets are puffing in his triumph. Brown, who has a higher place than he deserves, cows before Smith, who has found him out. What is the chorus of critics shouting bravo, a public-clabbing hands and flinging garlands? Brown knows that Smith has found him out, puff trumpets, wave banners, who is our boys for the immortal Brown. This is all very well, B. thinks, bowing the wild, smiling, laying his hand to his heart, that there stands Smith at the window. He has measured me, and some day the others will find me out too. It is a very curious sensation to sit by a man who has found you out, and who, as you know, has found you out. Or vice versa, to sit with a man whom you have found out. His talent is virtue. We know a little story or two about his virtue, and he knows we know it. We are singing over front Robinson's antecedents, as we grin, bow, and talk, and we are both humbucks together. Robinson a good fellow, is he? You know how he behaved to Hicks? A good-natured man, is he? Praise you, remember that little story of Mrs. Robinson's black eye? How men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed, and dry and sleep, with his dread of being found out on their consciences. Bardolf, who has robbed a church, and Nim, who has taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with their companions. Mr. Detective Bullseye appears and says, Oh, Bardolf, I want you about their pig's business. Mr. Bardolf knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hand to the little steel cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. He is found out. He must go. Goodbye, dull tear-sheet. Goodbye, Mrs. Quickly-mam. The other gentlemen and ladies de la société look on and exchange muted use with the departing friends, and an assured time will come, when the other gentlemen and ladies will be found out, too. What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has been, that for the most part our womankind are not endowed with the faculty of finding us out. They don't doubt and probe and weigh and take your measure. Lay down this paper, my benevolent friend and reader. Go into your drawing-room now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wake a sixpence. The ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome you will get. In light manner, let him come to your house, and tell your good lady his candid opinion of you, and fancy how she will receive him. Would you have your wife and children know you exactly for what you are, and to esteem you precisely at your worth? If so, my friend, you will live in a dreary house, and you will have but a chilly fireside. Do you suppose the people round it don't see your homely face as under a glamour, and as it were, with a halo of love round it? You don't fancy you are as you seem to them? Know such thing, my man, put away that monsters concede, and be thankful that they have not found you out. End of On Being Found Out by William Makepeace Thackeray The Notch on the Axe Part 1 of The Lock and Key Library. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Rick Cornwall. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Hawthorne. The Notch on the Axe by William Makepeace Thackeray Part 1. The Notch on the Axe. A Story a la Mode. Editors note, here Thackeray reduces to an absurdity, the literary fashion of the day, the vogue for startling stories and tales of terror, which was high in his time, and which influenced several of the stories which proceeded in this volume. But while Dickens made fun with mental reservations, while Buller Air Layton tried to explain by rising to the heights of natural philosophy, and Mortarine did not explain it all, but let his extravagant genius roam between heaven and earth, Thackeray's keen wit saw mainly one chance for exquisite literary satire and parody. At one point, or another in this skit, the style of each principal sensational novelist of the day is delightfully imitated. Part 1. Everyone remembers in the fourth book of the immortal poem of your blind bar, due to sightless orbs, no doubt, glorious shapes were apparent in vision celestial. How Adam discourses to Eve of the bright visitors who hovered round their Eden. Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, unseen both when we wake and when we sleep. How often, says Father Adam, from the steep of Echeline Hill or Thicket, have we heard celestial voices to the midnight air, soul or responsive to each other's notes singing. After the act of disobedience, when the Aryan pair from Eden took their solitary way, and went forth to toil and trouble on common earth, though the glorious ones no longer were visible, you cannot say they were gone. It was not that the bright ones were absence, but that the dim eyes of rebel man no longer could see them. In your chamber hangs a picture of one whom you never knew, but whom you have long held in tenderness regard, and who was painted for you by a friend of mine, the knight of Plimpton. She communes with you, she smiles on you, when your spirits are low, her bright eyes shine on you and cheer you. Her innocent sweet smile is a caress to you. She never fails to soothe you with her speechless prattle. You love her, she is alive with you. As you extinguish your candle and turn to sleep, though your eyes see her not, is she not there still smiling? As you lie in the night awake and thinking of your duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil of pressing the busy, weary, wakeful brain, as with a remorse, the crackling fire flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your little beauty is made, smiling with her sweet eyes. When moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when lids are closed, is she not there, the little beautiful one, though invisible and present and smiling still? Friend, the unseen ones are around about us, does it not seem as if time were drawing near when it shall be given to men to behold them? The print of which my friend spoke, and which indeed hangs in my room, though he's never been there, is that charming little winter piece of Sir Joshua, representing the little Lady Caroline Montague, afterwards Duchess of Buckleck. She is represented as standing in the midst of a winter landscape wrapped in muffin cloak, and she looks out of her picture with a smile so exquisite that a heron could not see her without being charmed. I beg your pardon, Mr. Pinto, I said to the person with whom I was conversing. I wonder, by the way, that I was not surprised at his knowing how fond I am of this print. You spoke of the night of Plimpton, Sir Joshua died in 1792, and you say he was your dear friend? As I spoke, I chanced to look at Mr. Pinto, and then it suddenly struck me, gracious powers, perhaps you are a hundred years old, now I think of it. You look more than a hundred. Yes, you may be a thousand years old, for what I know, your teeth are false. One eye is evidently false. Can I say that the other is not? If a man's age may be calculated by the rings around his eyes, this man may be as old as Methuselah. He has no beard, he wears a large, cruelly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers in Shepherd's Inn. Pinto passed a yellow bandana handkerchief over his awful white teeth, and kept his glass eyes steadily fixed on me. Sir Joshua's friend, said he, you perceive, eluding my direct question. Is not everyone that knows his picture his Reynolds friend? Suppose I tell you that I have been in his painting room scores of times, and that his sister, Thea, has made me tea, and his sister, Toffee, has made coffee for me. You will only say I'm an old ombug. Mr. Pinto, I remark, spoke all languages with an accent equally foreign. Suppose I tell you that I knew Mr. Sam Johnson, and did not like him. That I was at the very ball at Madame Cornelis's, which you have mentioned in one of your little, what do you call them? Bah, my memory begins to fail me. In one of your little whirligig papers? Suppose I tell you that Sir Joshua has been here in this very room. Have you then had these apartments for more than 70 years, I ask? They look as if they had not been swept for that time, don't they? Hey, I did not say that I had them for 70 years, but that Sir Joshua has visited me here. When I asked I and the man sternly for I began to think he was an imposter, he answered me with a glance still more stern. Sir Joshua Reynolds was here this very morning with Angelica Kaufman and Mr. Oliver Goldschmidt. He is still very much attached to Angelica, who still does not care for him. Because he is dead, and I was in the fourth morning couch at his funeral. Is that any reason why he should not come back to earth again? My good sir, you are laughing at me. He has sat many a time on that very chair which you are not occupying. There are several spirits in the room whom you cannot see. Excuse me. Here he turned around as if addressing someone, and began rapidly speaking a language unknown to me. It is Arabic, he said, a bad patois I had not owned. I learned it in Barbary when I was a prisoner among the Moors in Anno 1609. Been ick all this get-till, you haggen. Ah, you doubt me. Look at me well, at least I am like perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the figure of a man carrying a barrel around formed the initial letter, and which I copied from an old spoon now on my possession. As I looked at Mr. Pinto, I do declare he looks so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and felt very uneasy. Ha! said he, laughing through his false teeth. I declare they were false. I could see utterly toothless gums working up and down behind the pink coral. You see, I wore a beard then. I am chaffed now. Perhaps you tink I am a spoon. And as he laughed he gave me a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out. His glass eye out, his wig off, his very head off. But he stopped this convulsion by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink medicine, which, being open, spread a singular, acrid or aromatic odor through the apartment. And I thought I saw, but of this I cannot take an affirmation, a light green and violet flame flickering around the neck of the vial as he opened it. By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg. Over the dust, which lay quite thick on the board, you could see the mark of one foot very cleanly and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally impression made by the wooden stump. I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark and felt the secret comfort that it was not cloven. In this desolate apartment in which Mr. Pinto had invited me to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you might put a breakfast tray, and not a single other article of furniture. In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent gilt dressing case and some splendid diamond and ruby shirt studs lying by it, and a chest of drawers and a cupboard apparently full of clothes. Remembering him in bod and bod and in great magnificence, I wondered if his present denuded state. You have a house elsewhere, Mr. Pinto, I asked? Many since he, I have apartments in many cities. I lock them up and they do not carry more sluggish. I then remember that his apartment at Bodden, where I first met him, was bare and had no bed in it. There is, then, a sleeping room beyond? This is a sleeping room. He pronounced it dis. Can this, by the way, give any clue to the nationality of this singular man? If you sleep on these two old chairs, you have a rickety couch, if on the floor a dusty one. Suppose I sleep up there, said this strange man, and he actually pointed up to the ceiling. I thought him mad, or what he himself was called an umbug. I know, you do not believe me. But why should I deceive you? I came but to propose a matter of business to you. I told you I would give you the clue to the mystery of the two children in black whom you met at Bodden, and you came to see me. If I told you, you would not believe me. What for try and convince you? Ha, hey! And he shook his hand once, twice, thrice at me, and glared at me out of his eye in a peculiar way. Of what happened now, I protest I cannot give an accurate account. It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, while behind his glass eye there was a green illumination as if candle had been lit in it. It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputtering as it were, which penetrated me and forced me back into one of the chairs, the broken one, out of which I had much difficulty in scrambling when the strange glamour was ended. It seemed to me that when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arm as if lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me. When I came to myself, he was down from the ceiling and taken me out of the broken cane, bottom chair. Kindly enough, bah, said he, it is the smell of my medicine. It often gives the vertical. I thought you would have had a little fit. Come into the open air. And we went down the steps and into Shepard's Inn. Where the setting sun was just shining on the statue of the Shepard, the launderesses were trapezean about. The porters were leaning against the railing. And the clerks were playing at marvels to my inexpressible consolation. You said you were going to dine at the Grey Inn's coffee-house, he said. I was. I often dine there. There is excellent wine at the Grey Inn coffee-house. But I declare I never said so. I was not astonished at his remark. Perhaps I was in a dream. Perhaps I was in a dream. Is life a dream? Are dreams facts? Is sleeping being really awake? I don't know. I tell you I'm puzzled. I have read The Woman in White. The strange story. Not to mention that story stranger than fiction. In the Corn Hill Magazine. That story for which three credible witnesses are ready to vouch. I have had messages from the dead, and not only from the dead, but who never existed at all. I own, I'm in a state of much bewilderment. But if you please, we'll proceed with my simple, my artless story. Well then, we pass from Shepherd's Inn into Holburn, and look for a while at Woodgate's Brickabrack Shop, which I never can pass without delaying at the windows. Indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop and let me have one look more at the delightful Omnium Gatherum. And passing Woodgate's, we came to Gale's Little Shop, number 47, which is also a favorite haunt of mine. Mr. Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged salutations, Mr. Pinto, I said, would you like to see a real curiosity in this curiosity shop? Step into Mr. Gale's little back room. In that little back parlor, there are Chinese gongs, there are old sacks and Sever's Plates, there is a Fustenberg, Carl Theodore, Worcester, Amstel, Nanken, and other Jim Crockery. And in the corner, what do you think there is? There is an actual guillotine. If you doubt me, go and see. Gale High Holborn, number 47. It is a slim instrument, much slider than those which they make now. Some nine feet high, narrow, a pretty piece of upholstery enough. There is the hook over which the rope used to play, which loosened the dreadful axe above. And look, dropped in the orifice where the head used to go, there is the axe itself, all rusty, with a great notch in the blade. As Pinto looked at it, Mr. Gale was not in the room, I recollect. Happening to have been just called out by a customer who offered him three pound fourteen and six pence for a blue shepherded pate tendre. Mr. Pinto gave a little start and seemed crisp for a moment. Then he looked steadily toward one of the great porcelain stools which you see in the gardens. And it seemed to me, I tell you, I won't take my affidavit. I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir. I may have been sleep walking, perhaps as I am as I right now. I may have been under the influence of that astounding medium into whose hands I had fallen. But I vow, I heard Pinto say, with a rather ghastly grin on the porcelain stool. Nay, never shag your gory locks at me. Dalkins not say I did it. He pronounced it, by the way, I did it, by which I know that Pinto was a German. I heard Pinto say those very words and sitting on the porcelain stool I saw dimly at first, then with an awful distinctness, a ghost, an idolone, a form, a headless man sitting with his head and his lap, a worn expression of piteous surprise. At this minute, Mr. Gale entered from the front shop to show a customer some delft plates and he did not see, but we did. The figure rose up from the porcelain stool, shake its head, which it held in its hand and which kept its eyes fixed sadly on us and disappeared behind the guillotine. Come to the Grey's Inn Coffee House, Pinto said, and I will tell you how the notch and we walked down Holburn at about 37 minutes past 6 o'clock. If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader, I promised him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be astonished still more. Section 2 You will excuse me, I said to my companion for remarking that when you address the individual sitting on the porcelain stool with his head and his lap your ordinarily benevolent features, this I confess was a bouncer between ourselves, a more sinister and ill looking rascal than one peed. I have seldom set eyes on. Your ordinarily handsome face wore an expression that was by no means pleasing. You grinned at the individual just as you did at me when you came up to the seal, pardon me, as I thought you did when I fell down in a fit in your chambers. And I qualified my words in a great flutter and tremble. I did not care to offend the man, I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab and flying, of taking refuge in Dayan Martin's Blacking Warehouse, of speaking to a policeman, but no one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed him like his dog. I could not get away from him. So you see I went on meanly conversing with him and affecting his simpering confidence. I remember when I was a little boy at school going up fawning and smiling in this way with a warm boy. So I said in a word your ordinarily handsome face wore a disagreeable expression and et cetera. It is ordinarily very handsome said he with such a leer at a couple of passifiers that one of them cried, oh, quickly there's a precious guy and a child in its nurse's arms screamed itself into convulsions. Oh, we chais-suis-tres-cholais garçon then pure, certement continue Mr. Pinto. But you were right then that person was not very well pleased when he saw me. There was no love-loss between us as you say. And the world never knew a more worthless miscreant. I hated him, voyez-vous? I hated him alive. I hate him dead. I hate him man. I hate him ghost. If I see him twenty thousand years hence and why not, I shall hate him still. You remarked how he was dressed in black satin britches and striped stockings, a white-peak waistcoat, a gray coat with large metal buttons and his hair in powder. He must have worn a pigtail only, only it was cut off. Mr. Pinto cried yelling a laugh which I observed with a plain blow which took off the scoundrel's head. Ho-ho-ho! And he made a circle with his hook-nail finger around his own yellow neck and grinned with a horrible triumph. I promise you that fellow was surprised when he found his head in the pannier. Ha-ha! Did you ever cease to hate those whom you hate? Fire flashed terrifically from his glass eye as he spoke or to love those whom you once loved? Oh, never, never! My natural eye was bedewed with tears. But here we are at the gray's in-coffee house. James, what is the joint? That very respectful and efficient waiter brought in a bill of fare and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork and peas pudding which my acquaintance said would do as well as anything else. Though I remarked he only trifled with the peas pudding and left all the pork on the plate. I said, well, I must say that my friend Mr. Hart's pork wine is so good that I myself took. Well, I should think, I took three glasses. Yes, three, certainly. He, I mean Mr. P, the old robe was insatiable or we had to call for a second bottle in no time. When that was gone my companion wanted another. A little red mounted up to his yellow cheeks as he drank the wine and he winked at it and said he'd musing when pork wine was scarcely drunk in this country. Though the queen liked it and so did Hurley, but bowling broke didn't. He drank Florence and champagne. Dr. Swift put water to his wine. Jonathan, I once said to him, but, bah, Ultra Tom, Ultra Mours, another magnum, James. This was all very well. My good sir, I said, but that kind of price does not suit me. I only happen to have thirty-four and six pence in my pocket, of which I want a shilling for the waiter and eighteen pence for my cab. You rich foreigners and swells may spend what you like. I had them there for my friend's dress was as shabby as an old-clothes man. But a man with a family, Mr. Whatia, call him, cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his dinner alone. I call, as you say, I will, what you call, stand the dinner if you are so poor. And again he gave that disagreeable grin and placed an odious crook nailed and by no means clean finger to his nose. But I was not so afraid of him now for we were in a public place and the three glasses of port wine had, you see, given me courage. What a pretty snuff box, he remarked, as I handed in mine, which I am still old-fashioned It's a pretty old-gold box enough but valuable to me as a relic of an old, old relative whom I could just remember as a child when she was very kind to me. Yes, a pretty box. I can remember when many ladies, most ladies, carried a box, made two boxes, tabateer and bone barrier. What lady carries snuff boxes now, hey? Suppose you're astonishment if a lady in an assembly were to offer you a priest. Or a lady with such a box as this with a tour, as we used to call it then, with panniers, with a tortoise-shell cane, with the prettiest little high-heeled velvet shoes in the world. That was a time, that was a time. Oh, Eliza, Eliza, I have thee now in my mind's eye at Bungay on the Wavne. Did I walk with thee, Eliza? Did I not love thee? Did I not walk with thee then? Did I not see thee still? This was passing strange. There is no need to publish her revered name. Did indeed live at Bungay St. Mary's where she lies buried. She used to walk with a tortoise-shell cane and she used to wear little black velvet shoes with the prettiest high heels in the world. Did you know then my great-grandmother, I said? He pulled up his coat sleeve. Is that her name, he said? Eliza. There, I declare, my name of the kind old creature written in red on his arm. You knew her old, he said, divining my thoughts with his strange knack. I knew her young and lovely. I danced with her at the Burry Ball. Did I not, dear miss, as I live, he here mentioned dear Granny's maiden name. Her maiden name was her honoured married name was nothing. She buried your great-grandfather the year Poseidon won the New Market Cups in the year 1783. Yes, you were right. I danced a minuet with her at Burry that very night. I remembered over the old shaggy knife and spoon-case on the sideboard in my Granny's parlor a print by stubs of that very horse. My grand-sire in a red coat and his fair hair flowing over his shoulders was over the mantelpiece and Poseidon won the New Market Cup in the year 1783. Before I lost my poor leg and I quarreled with your grandfather. Ha! And as he said, Ha, there came three quiet little taps on the table. It is the middle table in the grays in Coffee House under the bust of the Lake Duke of Wellington. I fired in the air, he continued. Did I not? Tap, tap, tap. Your grandfather hit me in the leg. He married three months afterward. Captain Brown, I said, with no love for her. She is there. She is there. Tap, tap, tap. Yes, my first love. But there came tap, tap, which everybody knows means no. I forgot, he said, with a faint blush stealing over his wane features. She was not my first love. In my home country there was a young woman. Tap, tap, tap. There was here quite a lively single, was briskly repeated. And this I declare upon my honour. There was, I have said, a bottle of pork wine before us. I should say a decanter. That decanter was lifted up and out of it into our respected glasses two bumpers of wine were poured. I appealed to Mr. Hart, the landlord. I appealed to James, a respectful and intelligent waiter if this statement is not true. And when we had finished that magnum and I said, now in the least doubt her presence. Dear Granny, may we have another magnum? The table distinctly wrapped. No. Now, my good sir, Mr. Pinto said, who really began to be affected by the wine, you understand the interests I have taken in you. I love the Liza. Of course I don't mention family names. I knew you had that box which belonged to her. I will give you what you like for that box. Name your price at once and I'll pay you on the spot. You had not six pence in your pocket. Give you anything you like. Fifty, a hundred, a thousand pound. Come, come, said I. The gold of the box may be worth nine guineas and the face and we will put at six more. One thousand guineas, he screeched. One thousand and fifty pound deer. And he sank back in the chair. No, by the way, on his bench for he was sitting with his back to one of the partitions of the boxes. As I dare say, James remembers what he said to me. Don't go on in this way, I continued rather weakly, for I did not know whether I was in a dream. If you offer me a thousand guineas for this box, I must take it, mustn't I, dear granny? The table most distinctly said yes. And putting out his claws to seize the box, Mr. Pinto plunged his hook-nose into it and eagerly inhaled some of my forty-seven with a dash of argmin. Let's stay, you old harpy, I explained, being now in a sort of rage and quite familiar with him. James, a piece of note paper and a receipt stamp. This is all mighty well, sir, I said, but I don't know you. I never saw you before. I will trouble you to hand me that box back again, or give me a check with some known signature. Who's? The room happened to be very dark. Indeed, all the waiters were gone to supper, and there were only two gentlemen snoring in their respective boxes. They were all in a very pretty hand, and which was a ring with a cornet, with a lion-rampid gulls for a crest. I saw that hand take a dip of ink and write across the paper. Mr. Pinto, then taking a grey receipt stamp out of his blue leather pocketbook, fastened to the paper by the usual process, and the hand then rode across the receipt stamp, went across the table and shook hands with Pinto, and then, as if waving him adieu, vanished in the direction of the ceiling. There was the paper before me, wet with the ink. There was the pen which the hand had used. Does anybody doubt it? I have that pen now, a cedar stick of non-uncommon sort, and holding one of Gilot's pens. It is in my ink stand now, I tell you. Anybody may see it. The handwriting on the check for such the document was was first, 1862. Pay the bearer one thousand and fifty pounds. Rachel Sidonia, to Miser's Sidonia, pose en santo on company London. Noblas and best of women, said Pinto, kissing the sheet of paper with much reverence. My good, Mr. Roundabout, I suppose you do not question that signature. Indeed, the house of Sidonia, Pazisanto on company, is known to be one of the richest in Europe and as for the Countess Rachel, she was known to be the chief manager of that enormously wealthy establishment. There was only one little difficulty. The Countess Rachel died last October. I pointed out this circumstance and tossed over the paper to Pinto with a sneer. Set the brande au lait serre, he said, with some heat. You literary men are all en brunette. But I did not tink you such fools with this. I gave you three pounds and I offer you a thousand because I know you want money to pay that rascals Tom's college bills. This strange man actually knew that my escape grace, Tom, had been a source of great expense and annoyance to me. You see, money costs me nothing and you refuse to take it once, twice. Will you take this check in exchange for your Trumpery snuff box? What could I do? But after all, a thousand giddies are not to be had every day. Vita Bargen said I, shall we have a glass of wine on it? says Pinto. And to this proposal, I also unwillingly exceeded, reminding him, by the way, that he had not yet told me the story of the headless man. Your poor grandmother was right just now when she said she was not my first love. It was one of those banal women. We tell each she is our first passion. They reply with a similar illusory formula. No man is any woman's first love. No woman any man's. We are in love in our nurses arms and women coquette with their eyes before their tongue can form a word. How could your lovely relative love me? I was far, far too old for her. I'm older than I look. And many a woman before your relative has not always been fortunate for them to love me. So for any round the dreadful circus where you fell and whence I was dragged corpse like by the heels, their sat multitudes more savage than the lions which mangled your sweet form to nay. When we marched to that terrible stake together at Valley Dolo, the Protestant and the Jay, but put away that memory. Boy, it was a happy for thy grandad that she loved me not. During that strange period he went on, when the teeming time was great with the revolution that was speedily to be born. I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned friend, Khalid Sturl. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it. Though, as you know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief or director. He was unseen hands. Never mind who was chief or who was second. Never mind my age, it boots not to tell it. Why shall I expose myself to your scornful incredulity? Or reply to your questions in words that are familiar to you but which you cannot understand. Words are symbols of things which you know or of things which you don't know. If you don't know them to speak as idle. You may not be able to understand what it means. About physics, metaphysics, language, the origin and destiny of man, during which time I was rather bored and to relieve my ennui drank a glass or so of wine. Love, friend, is the fountain of youth. It may not happen to me once, once in an age, but when I love then I am young. I love when I was in Paris. I drink more wine. Love is every young. I was a boy at the feet of Bethelde de Bechamel, the fair, the fawn, the fickle, ah, the false. The strange old man's agony was here really terrific. And he showed himself much more agitated than when he had been speaking about my grandmother. I thought Blanche might love me. I could speak to her in the language of all the countries and tell her the lore of all the Sanskrit source and whisper to her the darkly mysteries of the Egyptian Magi. I could chant for her the wild choruses that rang in the disheveled illusion revel. I could tell her, and I would, the watchword never known but to one woman, the Saban Queen, which I would breathe in the asthma ear of Solomon. You don't attend. You've drunk too much wine. Perhaps I may as well own that I was not attending, for he had been carrying on for about fifty-seven minutes, and I don't like a man to have all the talk to himself. Blanche de Bechamel was wild then about this secret of masonry. In early, early years I loved. I married a girl as fair as Blanche, who too was tormented by curiosity, who too would peep into my closet into the only secret guarded from her. A dreadful fate befell poor Fatima. An accident shortened her life. Poor Thane. She had a foolish sister who urged her on. I always told her to beware of Anne. She died. They said her brothers killed me, a gross falsehood. Am I dead? If I were, could I pledge you in this wine? Was your name, I ask, quite bewildered? Was your name, pray, then ever me thought we were speaking of Blanche de Bechamel. I loved her, young man. My pearls, and diamonds, and treasure, my wit, my wisdom, my passion. I flung them all into the child's lap. I was a fool. Was strong Samson not as weak as I? Was Solomon the wise much better when Baucus weedled him? I said to the king, but enough of that. As I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere. As yours, my friends, have been absent once or twice tonight. To know the secret of masonry was the wretched child's mad desire. With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, she strove to coax it from me. From me! Ha-ha! I had an apprentice, the son of a dear friend, who died by my side at Rossbock. When Subis, with whose army I was sent, the young Chevalier Gobi de Moushe, was glad enough to serve as my clerk and help in some chemical experiments in which I was engaged with my friend, Dr. Mesmer. The Thilday saw this young man. Since woman were, has it not been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure? Away from the very first it had been so. And as my companion spoke, he looked as wicked as a servant that coiled a tree and hissed a poison counsel to the first woman. One evening I went, as was my want, to see Blanche. She was radiant, she was filled with spirits, a saucy triumph blazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled in her childish wades. She uttered in the course of her rhapsody a hint, an intimation, so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a minute. She would lie to me. But I knew how to make a falsehood impossible, and I ordered her to go to sleep. At this moment the clock, after his previous convulsion, sounded twelve, and as the new editor of the Corn Hill magazine, and he, I promise you, won't stand any nonsense, will only allow seven pages, I am obliged to leave off at the very most interesting point of the story. End of the Notch on the X, Part One. Part Two of the Notch on the X, from Deloc and Key Library. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org read by Julee Formoleum. The Lock and Key Library, edited by Julian Harthorne. The Notch on the X, a story a la Maud by William Makepeace Thackray. Part Two. Chapter Three. Are you of our fraternity? I see you are not. The secret which Manoiselle de Bechamel confided to me in her mad triumph and wild hoidon spirits, she was but a child, poor thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen, but I love them young, a folly not unusual with the old. Manoiselle de Bechamel was a kinder, frost his knuckles into his hollow eyes, and, I am sorry to say, so little regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears made streaks of wide over his guard and dark hands. Ah, at fifteen, poor child, thy fate was terrible. Go to. It is not good to love me, friend. In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sallow, hooked-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old man with his shantyth, they have a queer taste. That is what I was thinking. Jack Wilkes, the handsomest man in London, had but half an hour start of him, and without vanity I am scarcely uglier than Jack Wilkes. We were members of the same club at Madame Hammaby, Jack and I, and had many a merry night together. Well, sir, I... Mary Scotland knew me, but as a little hunchback music master, and yet, and yet, I think, she was not indifferent to her David Riz, and she came to misfortune. They all do. They all do. Sir, you're wandering from your point, I said, with some severity, for really, for this old humbug to hint that he had been the baboon who frightened the clop at Madame Hammaby, that he had been him the inquisition at Fela d'Orlid, that under the name of D. Riz, as he called it, he had known the lovely Queen of Scots was a little too much. Sir, then, I said, you were speaking about Miss Bechamel. I really have no time to hear all of your biography. Faith! The good wine gets into my head. I should think so, the old topper, for bottles over two glasses. To return to poor Blanche. As I said, laughing, joking with her, she let slip a word, a letter word which filled me with dismay. Someone had told her a part of the secret, the secret which has been divulged, scarce fries in three thousand years, the secret of the free masons. Do you know what happens to those in initiate who learn that secret, to those wretched men in the initiate who reveal it? As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me with this horrible piercing glance so that I said quite uneasily on my bench. He continued, did I question her awake? I knew she would lie to me. Poor child! I loved her no less because I did not believe a word she said. I loved her blue eyes, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song, though when she spoke, false as ably. You are aware that I possess a rather remarkable degree which we have agreed to call the Mismaric power. My big girl to sleep. Then she was obliged to tell me all. It was as I had surmised. Gobi de Moshi, my wretched, besotted Mismaric secretary in his visits to the Chateau of the Marquis de Bechamel, who was one of our society, had seen blanche. I suppose it was because she had been warned that he was worthless and poor, artful and coward. She loved him. She wormed out of the besotted wretched the secrets of our order. Did he tell you the number one? I asked. She said yes. Did he, I further inquired, tell you the Oh, don't ask me. Don't ask me, she said, writhing on the sofa, where she lay in the presence of the Marquis de Bechamel, her most unhappy father. Poor Bechamel, how pale he looked as I spoke. Did he tell you, I repeated with a dreadful calm, the number two, she said yes. The poor old Marquis rose up and, clasping his hand, fell on his knees before Count Gaule. I went by different name then. What's in a name? That which he called a rosy caution by any other name, he said, Monsieur, he said, I am old. I am rich. I have five hundred thousand of rent in Picardie. I have half as much in Artois. I have two hundred and eighty thousand on the Grand Livre. I am promised by my sovereign at Dukedom and his orders with a reversion to my heir. I am a grandeur of Spain of the first class of honour, everything I have in the world. But don't ask the third question. Godfra de Bouillon, Comte Bechamel, grandeur of Spain and Prince of Voluvento. In our assembly, what was the oath you swore? The old man writhed as he remembered its terrific pervert. Though my heart was wracked with agony and I would have died I'd cheerfully, died indeed as if that were a penalty. I lay on the lovely child a pang. I said to her calmly, Blanche de Bechamel, Did Goubidou Moussi tell you secret number three? She whispered a wee that was quite faint, faint and small, but her poor father fell in convulsions at her feet. She died suddenly that night. Did I not tell you those who I love come to know good? When General Bonaparte crossed the Saint Bernard, he saw in a convent an old monk with a white beard wondering about the corridors cheerful and rather stout but mad, mad as a marcher. General, I said to him, Did you ever see that face before? He had not. He had not mingled much with the high classes of our society before the revolution. I knew the poor old man well enough. He was the last of a noble race and I loved his child. And did she die by man? Did I say so? Did I whisper the secrets of Weym Gricht? I say she died that night and he, the heartless, the villain, the betrayer. You saw him seated in yonder curiosity shop by yonder guillotine with a scoundrel he had in his lap. You saw how slight that instrument was. It was one of the first that he made and which he showed to private friends in a hangar and a rubik-bu where he lived. The invention created some little conversation among scientific men at the time, though I remember a machine in Edinburgh of a very similar construction 200, well, many, many years ago that the breakfast which guillotine gave, he showed us the instrument and much talk arose among us as to whether people suffered under it. And now I must tell you what befold a traitor who had caused all this suffering. Did he know that a poor child's death was a sentence? He felt a cowardly satisfaction that with her was gone the secret of his treason. Then he began to doubt. I had means to penetrate all his thoughts as well as to know his acts. Then he became a slave to horrible fear. He fled an abject terror to a convent. They still existed in Perry and behind the walls of Jacobins Dredge thought himself secure. Poor fool. I had but to set one of my sonambo-less to sleep. Her spirit went forth and spied a shuddering wretch in a cell. She described street, the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore and which she wore. And now this is what happened. In his chamber and a ruse sent on Rhea by Rhee said a man alone, a man who has been maligned, a man who has been called a naven charlatan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is said, in Roman inquisitions, Hussuth and elsewhere. A man who has a mighty will and looking toward a Jacobins convent, of which from his chamber he could see despires and trees. This man willed and it was not yet dawn and he willed and one who was lying in his cell in the convent of Jacobins awake and shuddering with terror for a crime which he had committed fell asleep. But though he was asleep his eyes were open and after tossing and writhing he could not go. He rose up and donned his clothes, a grey coat, a vest of white peak, black satin small clothes, ripped silk stockings and a white stock with a steel buckle and he ranged his hair and he tied his queue all the while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which moves, which flies sometimes, and he put on his hat and he went forth from his cell and though the dawn was not yet he dropped the corridors as seeing them and he passed into the cloister and then into the garden where lied the ancient dead and he came to the wicket which brother Jerome was opening just at the dawning and the crowd was already waiting with their cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren and he passed and went on his way and the few people then a bro to mark him said yeah, how very odd he looks he looks like a man walking in the sleep this was said by various persons by milk women with their cans and carts coming into the town by roisterous who had been drinking at the taverns of the barrier for it was mid-lend by the sergeant of the watch who eyed him sternly as he passed near their hallboards and he passed on and moved by their hallboards and moved by the cries of the roisterous by the market women coming with their milk and eggs he walked through the Rue Saint-Orinnerie I say by the Rue Rambouteau by the Rue Saint-Antoine by the King Chateau of the Bastille by the Fort Burke Saint-Antoine and he came to number 29 in the Rue Piccou a house which then stood between a court and garden that is there was a building of one story with a great coach door then there was a court around which were stables coach houses, offices then there was a house a two-storied house with a parent in front behind the house was a garden a garden of 250 French feet in length and as 100 feet of France equal 106 feet of England the garden my friend equaled exactly 265 feet of British measure in the centre of the garden was a fountain and a statue or to speak more correctly two statues one was recumbent a man over him sabre and hands stood a woman the man was Olofern the woman was Judith from the head from the trunk the water gushed the doctor was it not a drool of taste at the end of the garden was a doctor's cabinet of study my faith a single cabinet and single pictures decapitation of Charles Premier de Vaitaul decapitation of Montreux et Edembourg decapitation of Sainte-Marre when I tell you that he was a man of taste charming through this garden by these statues the stairs went a pale figure of him who the porter said knew the way of the house he did turning neither right nor left he seemed to walk through the statues the obstacles to flower beds the stairs the doors the tables the chairs in the corner of the room was that instrument which Guillotine had just invented and his own axe peace be to his name with him I deal not in a frame of mahogany neatly worked was a board with a half circle in it over which another board fitted above was a heavy axe which fell you know how it was held up by rope and when this rope was untied or cut the steel fell to the story of which I now have to relate credence or not as you will the sleeping man went up through that instrument he laid his head in it asleep asleep he then took a little pen knife out of the pocket of his wide dimmergy waistcoat he cut the rope asleep the axe descended on the head of the traitor and villain the notch in it was made by the steel buckle of his stock which was cut through a strange legend has got a broad that after the deed was done the figure rose took the head from the basket walked forth through the garden and by the screaming porters up the gate and went and laid itself down at the mahog but for this I will not vouch only of this be sure there are more things in heaven and earth her ratio than I dreamed of in your philosophy more and more the light peeps through the chinks soon amidst music ravishing the curtain will rise and the glorious scene be displayed adieu remember me that is dawn Pinto said and he was gone I am ashamed to say that my first movement was to clutch the check which he had left with me to present the very moment to bank opened I know the importance of these things and that meant change of their mind sometimes I sprang through the streets to the great banking house of Manasseh and Duke Street it seemed to me as if I actually flew as I walked as o'clock struck ten I was at a counter and laid down my check the gentleman who received it who was one of the Hebrew persuasion as were the other two hundred clerks of the establishment having looked at the draft with terror in his cabinet then looked at me then called himself two of his fellow clerks and queer it was to see all the reculum beaks over to paper come come said I don't keep me here all day hand me over to money short if you please for I was you see a little alarmed and so determined to assume some extra bluster will you have the kindness to step into the parlour to the partners the clerk said and I followed him what again shrieked a bald head at red whisked gentlemen whom I knew to be Mr. Manasseh Mr. Salatia this is too bad leave me with this gentleman ass and the clerk disappeared sir he said I know how you came by this the counterpenter gave it to you it is too bad I honor my parents I honor their parents I honor their bills but this one of Grandma's is too bad it is upon my word now she have been dead these five and thirty years and this last four months she has left a barrel place and took to drawing on our house it's too bad Grandma it is too bad and he appealed to me and tears actually trickled down his nose is it a counter-sidonist check or not asked totally but I tell you she's dead it's a shame it's a shame at his grandma and he cried and wiped his great nose in his yellow pocket handkerchief look here will you take pounds instead of guineas she's dead I tell you it's no go take the pounds one thousand pounds ten nice neat crisp hundred pound notes and go away did you do nothing I said and I put on an attitude of resolution which I confess surprised even myself very veiled shrieked with many o's then you shall have nothing nothing but a policeman Miss Abenegle call a policeman ting that you humbug and imposter and here within a bundles of fightful language which I dare not repeat the wealthy banker abused and defied me or Buddha come what was I to do if a banker did not choose to honour a cheque drawn by his dead grandmother I began to wish I had my snuff box back I began to think I was a fool for changing that little old fashioned gold with a slip of strange paper meanwhile the banker had passed from his fit of anger to a paroxysm of despair he seemed to be addressing some person invisible but in the room look here madam you've really been coming here too strong a hundred thousand six months and now a thousand more the house can't stand it it won't stand it I say what oh mercy mercy as he uttered these words her hand fluttered over the table and the air it was a female hand that which I had seen the night before that female hand took a pan from the green base table dipped it in a silver ink stand and wrote on a quarter of a sheet of false gap on the blocking book how about the diamond robbery if you do not pay I will tell him where they are what diamonds what robbery what was this mystery that will never be ascertained for the wretched man's demeanour instantly changed certainly sir I said forcing in grin how will you have the money sir all right mrs ebony go this way out I hope I shall often see you again I said on which I own poor menace gave a dreadful grin and shot back into his panna I ran home clutching the ten delicious crisp hundred pounds and the dear little fifty which made up the account I flew through the street again I got to my chambers I bought of the outer doors I sank back in my great chair and slept my first thing on waking was to feel for my money perdition where was I ah on the table before me was my grandmother's snuff box and by its side one of those awful those admirable sensation novels which I had been reading and which are full of delicious wonder but that a guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale's number forty seven High Holborn I give you my honour I suppose I was dreaming about it I don't know what is dreaming what is life why shouldn't I sleep on the ceiling and am I sitting on it now or on the floor I'm puzzled but enough if the fashion for sensation novels goes on for a thousand and fifty volumes for the present Dixie but between ourselves this pinto who fought at the Coliseum was nearly being roasted by the Inquisition and sang duets at Hollywood I'm rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of roundabout papers if you end of The Notch on the Axe by William McPeace The Cray