“It is thus that his mornings pass,” said
Arabella Crane, with a wild bitter pity in the tone
of her voice. “Look, I say, is he formidable
now? can you fear him?”
“Very much indeed,” muttered Cutts.
“He is only stupefied, and he can shake off
a doze as quickly as a bulldog does when a rat is let
into his kennel.”
“Mr. Cutts, you tell me that he constantly carries
about him the same old pocket-book which he says contains
his fortune; in other words, the papers that frighten
his victim into giving him the money which is now
the cause of his danger. There is surely no pocket
you cannot pick or get picked, Mr. Cutts? Fifty
pounds for that book in three hours.”
“Fifty pounds are not enough; the man he sponges
on would give more to have those papers in his power.”
“Possibly; but Losely has not been dolt enough
to trust you sufficiently to enable you to know how
to commence negotiations. Even if the man’s
name and address be amongst those papers, you could
not make use of the knowledge without bringing Jasper
himself upon you; and even if Jasper were out of the
way, you would not have the same hold over his victim;
you know not the circumstances; you could make no story
out of some incoherent rambling letters; and the man,
who, I can tell you, is by nature a bully, and strong,
compared with any other man but Jasper, would seize
you by the collar; and you would be lucky if you got
out of his house with no other loss than the letters,
and no other gain but a broken bone. Pooh!
You know all that, or you would have stolen the
book, and made use of it before. Fifty pounds
for that book in three hours; and if Jasper Losely
be safe and alive six months hence, fifty pounds more,
Mr. Cutts. See! he stirs not must be fast asleep.
Now is the moment.”
“What, in his own room!” said Cutts with
contempt. “Why, he would know who did
it; and where should I be to-morrow? No—in
the streets; any one has a right to pick a pocket
in the Queen’s highways. In three hours
you shall have the book.”
Mercury is the Patron
deity of mercantile speculators,
as well as of
crack-brained poets; indeed, he is much more
favourable, more A
friend at A Pinch, to the former class of his
proteges than he is to
the latter.
“Poolum
per hostes mercurius celer,
Denso
paventem sustulit aere.”
