So he whistles it off and marches on.
Arrived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and mounting
Mr. Tulkinghorn’s stair, he finds the outer
door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper
not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase
being dark besides, he is yet fumbling and groping
about, hoping to discover a bell-handle or to open
the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn comes up
the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks,
“Who is that? What are you doing there?”
“I ask your pardon, sir. It’s George.
The sergeant.”
“And couldn’t George, the sergeant, see
that my door was locked?”
“Why, no, sir, I couldn’t. At any
rate, I didn’t,” says the trooper, rather
nettled.
“Have you changed your mind? Or are you
in the same mind?” Mr. Tulkinghorn demands.
But he knows well enough at a glance.
“In the same mind, sir.”
“I thought so. That’s sufficient.
You can go. So you are the man,” says
Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, “in
whose hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?”
“Yes, I am the man,” says the trooper,
stopping two or three stairs down. “What
then, sir?”
“What then? I don’t like your associates.
You should not have seen the inside of my door this
morning if I had thought of your being that man.
Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous
fellow.”
With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone
for him, the lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts
the door with a thundering noise.
Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the
greater because a clerk coming up the stairs has heard
the last words of all and evidently applies them to
him. “A pretty character to bear,”
the trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides
downstairs. “A threatening, murderous,
dangerous fellow!” And looking up, he sees
the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he
passes a lamp. This so intensifies his dudgeon
that for five minutes he is in an ill humour.
But he whistles that off like the rest of it and
marches home to the shooting gallery.
The Ironmaster
Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the
time being, of the family gout and is once more, in
a literal no less than in a figurative point of view,
upon his legs. He is at his place in Lincolnshire;
but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds,
and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though
well defended, and eke into Sir Leicester’s
bones. The blazing fires of faggot and coal—Dedlock
timber and antediluvian forest—that blaze
upon the broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight
on the frowning woods, sullen to see how trees are
sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The hot-water
pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the
cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains
fail to supply the fires’ deficiencies and to
satisfy Sir Leicester’s need. Hence the
fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to
the listening earth that Lady Dedlock is expected
shortly to return to town for a few weeks.
