Snawley bridled with apprehension. “Does he come, too?”
“Indeed, he does.”
“Will he be added to the fee?”
“No, Mr. Snawley.”
“Well, then, I will just go below and wait for you to come down,” said our client, coming to his feet and seizing his hat from the mantel, where I had put it next to Pons’s unanswered letters, unfolded and affixed to the mantel by a dagger, a souvenir of one of his adventures.
Our client had hardly taken himself off before Pons’s laughter burst forth.
When he relieved himself, he turned to me. “What do you make of that fellow, Parker?”
“I have never seen the like,” I replied. “Parsimonious, suspicious, and, I suspect, not nearly as poor as he would have us believe.”
“Capital! Capital! It is all too human for the rich to affect poverty and the poor to affect wealth. We may take it that Mr. Snawley is not poor. If he has a corner house and room enough for someone to walk from one end of the property, around the corner, to the other, we may assume that Mr. Snawley’s ‘bit of land,’ as he puts it, is appreciably more than what the average individual would take for a ‘bit.’ ”
He was getting into his greatcoat as he spoke, and I got into mine. As I reached for my bowler, he clapped his deerstalker to his head, and we were off down the stairs to where our equipage waited at the curb.
Snawley ushered me into the cab.
Behind me, Pons paused briefly to ask, “How long does this fellow stay on his beat?”
“Two, three hours a night. Rain, fog, or shine. And now, with Christmas almost upon us, he has brought along some bells to ring. It is maddening, sir, maddening,” said our client explosively.
Pons got in, Snawley closed the door and mounted to the box, and we were off toward Edgware Road, and from there to Lambeth and Brixton and Dulwich, seeing always before us, from every clear vantage point, the dome of the Crystal Palace, and at every hand the color and gayety of the season. Yellow light streamed from the shops into the falling snow, tinsel and glass globes, aglow with red and green and other colors shone bright, decorations framed the shop windows, holly and mistletoe hung in sprays and bunches here and there. Coster’s barrows offered fruit and vegetables, Christmas trees, fish and meat, books, cheap china, carpets. Street sellers stood here and there with trays hung from their necks, shouting their wares-Christmas novelties, balloons, tricks, bonbons, comic-papers, and praising the virtues of Old Moore’s Almanack. At the poultry shops turkeys, geese, and game hung to entice the late shoppers, for it was the day before Christmas Eve, only a trifle more than two years after the ending of the great conflict, and all London celebrated its freedom from the austerities of wartime. The dancing snowflakes reflected the colors of the shops-sometimes red, sometimes yellow or pink or blue or even pale green-and made great halos around the streetlamps.
Snawley avoided crowded thoroughfares as much as possible, and drove with considerable skill; but wherever we went, people turned on the street to look at the hansom cab as it went by-whether they were children or strollers, policemen on their rounds or shoppers with fowl or puddings in their baskets-startled at sight of this apparition from the past.
II
Our destination proved to be Upper Norwood.
Ebenezer Snawley’s home was an asymmetric Jacobean pile, dominated by a small tower, and with Elizabethan bay windows that faced the street. It rose in the midst of a small park that occupied the corner of a block and spread over a considerable portion of that block. A dim glow shone through the sidelights at the door; there was no other light inside. The entire neighborhood had an air of decayed gentility, but the falling snow and the gathering darkness sufficiently diminished the glow of the street-lamp so that it was not until we had descended from the cab, which had driven in along one side of the property, bound for a small coach house at the rear corner-directly opposite the street corner-and walked to the door of the house that it became evident how much the house, too, had decayed for want of adequate care, though it was of mid-Victorian origin, and not, therefore, an ancient building-little more than half a century old.
Leaving his steed to stand in the driveway, where the patient animal stood with its head lowered in resignation born of long experience, our client forged ahead of us to the entrance to his home, and there raised his cane and made such a clatter on the door as might have awakened the neighborhood, had it slept, at the same time raising his voice petulantly to shout, “Pip! Pip! Pip Scratch! Up and about!”
There was a scurrying beyond the door, the sound of a bar being lifted, a key in the lock, and the door swung open, to reveal there holding aloft a bracket of three candles a man of medium height, clad in tight broadcloth black breeches and black stockings, and a sort of green-black jacket from the sleeves of which lace cuffs depended. He wore buckled shoes on his feet. He was stooped and wore on his thin face an expression of dubiety and resignation that had been there for long enough to have become engraved upon his features. His watery blue eyes looked anxiously out until he recognized his master; then he stepped aside with alacrity and held the candles higher still, so as to light our way into the shadowed hall.
“No songs yet, Pip? Eh? Speak up.”
“None, sir.”
“Well, he will come, he will come,” promised our client, striding past his man. “Lay a fire in the study, and we will sit by it and watch. Come along, gentlemen, come along. We shall have a fire by and by, to warm our bones-and perhaps a wee drop of sherry.”
Pip Scratch stepped forward with a springy gait and thrust the light of the candles ahead, making the shadows to dance in the study whither our client led us. He put the bracket of candles up on the wall, and backed away before Snawley’s command.
“Light up, Pip, light up.” And to us, “Sit down, gentlemen.” And to Pip Scratch’s retreating back, “And a few drops of sherry. Bring-yes, yes, bring the Amontillado. It is as much as I can do for my guest.”
The servant had now vanished into the darkness outside the study. I was now accustomed to the light, and saw that it was lined with books from floor to ceiling on three walls, excepting only that facing the street along which we had just come, for this wall consisted of the two Elizabethan bay windows we had seen from outside, each of them flanking the fireplace. Most of the shelves of books were encased; their glass doors reflected the flickering candles.
“He will be back in a moment or two,” our client assured us.
Hard upon his words came Pip Scratch, carrying a seven-branched candelabrum and a salver on which was a bottle of Amontillado with scarcely enough sherry in it to more than half fill the three glasses beside it. He bore these things to an elegant table and put them down, then scurried to the bracket on the wall for a candle with which to light those in the candelabrum, and, having accomplished this in the dour silence with which his master now regarded him, poured the sherry, which, true to my estimate, came only to half way in each of the three glasses-but this, clearly, was approved by Mr. Snawley, for his expression softened a trifle. This done, Pip Scratch hurried from the room.
“Drink up, gentlemen,” said our client, with an air rather of regret at seeing his good wine vanish. “Let us drink to our success!”
“Whatever that may be,” said Pons enigmatically, raising his glass.
Down went the sherry, a swallow at a time, rolled on the tongue-and a fine sherry it proved to be, for all that there was so little of it, and while we drank, Pip Scratch came in again and laid the fire and scurried out once more, and soon the dark study looked quite cheerful, with flames growing and leaping higher and higher, and showing row after row of books, and a locked case with folders and envelopes and boxes in it, a light bright enough so that many of the titles of the books could be seen-and most of them were by Dickens-various editions, first and late, English and foreign, and associational items.