CHAPTER XXX.
Jacob’s Return Home.—An Unexpected Visitor.—The Lonely Watch.
When Gray left the public-house in which lay the body of the murdered waterman, he took a rapid route by the edge of the river to his own gloomy home, and very soon reached the cluster of condemned houses, in one of which he resided.
Looking very cautiously around him, as was his invariable custom before gliding into his abode, to see if any one was observing him, he took a key from his pocket, and, opening the frail door, quickly entered the passage.
Then applying his eye to the window, through which he had reconnoitred Britton and Learmont, he took a long look up and down the street to see if he could detect the form of Ada lurking in any of the doorways, awaiting his return.
“She is not here,” he muttered. “Well, she knows nothing—can guess nothing, or, what little she does know or guess, she dares not utter to human ears, for she will be tormented by the supposition that I may be her father. Let her die in the streets—let her rot, so she trouble not me; and yet I wonder she has not returned. She must have lost her way.”
Gray then opened the door again, and wiped off the words he had written, then, carefully closing it, he had ascended about half way up the creaking staircase, when his ears were suddenly saluted by a noise that made him tremble, and convulsively clutch the crazy banisters for support.
The noise was of quite a new character to Jacob Gray, and he could not divine how or in what manner it could possibly be produced. It was not a walking, it was not a fighting or a struggling—a dancing; but it was a singular and wonderful admixture of them all. Then there would be a shuffling scramble across the floor, then a hop, step, and a jump, apparently, which would be followed by a continued bumping that threatened the existence of the crazy house, and shook it to the very foundation.
The perspiration of intense fear broke out upon the aching forehead of Jacob Gray, and he sat down melancholy upon the stairs, to try to think what could be the cause of the singular uproar in his commonly so lonely dwelling.
Suddenly the noise approached the stair-head, and it assumed the form of the pattering of naked feet, accompanied by the heavy tread of some one in clumsy shoes.
Jacob Gray’s superstitious fears, and they were tolerably numerous, got the better of his prudence, and he raised a cry of terror at the idea of something of an unearthly character having taken up its abode in his solitary dwelling.
The moment he spoke, the sounds rapidly retreated from the stair-head, and for a few moments all was still as the grave.
Jacob Gray listened attentively for a long time before he would venture up the staircase, and when he did so, it was step by step, and with the utmost caution.
When he reached the top, he stood for a time, and listened attentively. Not a sound met his ears. Then he gathered courage, and advanced to the door of the room from whence the noises had seemed to proceed.
All was still, and Jacob Gray summoned his courage to turn the handle of the lock and peer into the apartment.
“There is no one here,” he muttered. “What could it have been? Imagination could not so deceive me!”
As he glanced round the room, to his surprise, he saw that several of the articles which it contained were displaced; and his apprehensions were still further increased by seeing on the floor several prints of feet, of a character he could not define, and was quite certain he had never seen before.
Scarcely had he time to think upon these strange and startling appearances, when a low growl met his ears, and immediately upon that a voice exclaimed.—
“There, now, you’ve done it! Oh, cuss you, Popsy.”
Gray gave a jump to the door, and he could scarcely believe his eyes when a man’s head appeared from beneath the sofa, and confronted him with a mixed expression of effrontery and apprehension.
“How—came—you—here?” gasped Gray.
“Popsy come out,” was the man’s only reply to his interrogatory; and, to Gray’s surprise, an immense shaggy bear made its appearance from the same place of concealment.
“Who are you?” cried Jacob Gray.
“Why don’t you answer the gentleman, you brute?” said the man, dealing the bear a heavy blow with his fist; “affectionate ways is lost upon you, that they is—”
“How dare you come here?” cried Gray.
“Don’t ye hear?” screamed the man, still addressing the bear. “How dare ye come here?—Eh?”
“Spy!—Villain!” cried Gray, drawing from his breast the same knife with which he would have stabbed Ada to the heart.
“Hilloah!—Hilloah!” cried the man. “Do you hear, my Popsy, what he calls ye?”
The bear commenced a low growling, and displayed a formidable row of blackened fangs at Jacob Gray.
“Who and what are you?” shrieked Gray to the man.
“Barbican Tibbs, the bear warden, but common people calls me Tipsy Tibbs, and nothink else.”
“What in the name of hell brought you here?” cried Gray.
“Oh! I’m confidential,” replied the man, “and I don’t mind telling you.”
“Quickly then, quickly.”
“Why, you see they say as there isn’t to be allowed more than three bear wardens in Westminster, and as I’ve only just come from Canterbury, I makes faces and a parsecutor.”
“Faces, and a what?”
“A parsecutor—that is, they parsecutes me, and I gives them a dodge through the streets, you see; and they, coming rather quick, I bolts down this here street, and the first thing I sees is ‘wait—J.G.’ on your door.”
“Well, what then?”
“Why, then Popsy and me, we gives the door a drive and we gets in, then we shuts it again, and we’ve waited here ever since.”
“And it was you who made the noise I heard just now, as I was ascending the stairs?”
“Very like; and it has quite alarmed poor Popsy, and shattered his nerves by squeaking out in the passage.”
“How long have you been here?”
“A matter of half an hour.”
“What have you stolen?”
“Stole! Stole!”
“Yes: tell me, for there are some things I value, and some I do not.”
“Popsy, does ye hear what a opinion he has of your morals?”
Gray walked across the room, and opening a door that led to an inner apartment, he entered it and remained absent some minutes. During that absence he took from a chest (the key of which he had about him) a large sum of money, being the bulk of what he had, from time to time, received of Learmont, and he stowed it carefully about his person; the greatest care, however, he bestowed upon a packet of papers that were at the bottom of the bag. These he placed carefully in his breast, and then returned to the room in which was the bear warden and his shaggy associate.
“Hark you, friend,” said Gray, “I am going to leave this house.”
“Good morning,” said the bear warden.
“You seem a—a deserving man.”
“Do I?”
“Yes: I will give you the furniture you see about here, if you will defend it against all comers; and should a young girl come here, will you detain her for me?”
“Well, that’s odd,” said Tibbs, “but I don’t know you, my master.”
“Nor will you, I will take my own time and opportunity of calling upon you.”
“Well” said the beat warden, “I don’t mind obliging you, particularly as I haven’t anything of my own. Is there anything worth having up stairs, old fellow?”
“There is,” said Gray—“and recollect one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Should a man come of burly frame and bloated aspect, be assured he comes to take from you, if he can, all that I have given to you—be assured of that.”
“The deuce he does!”
“You will know him. He is rough of speech, and coarse and bulky. Beware of him!”
“But what shall I do with him?”
“Kill him—slaughter him. Take his life how and when you will—or maim him—do him some deadly harm, for, on my soul, I do not believe he has written any confession. Stay, I had forgotten.”
Gray hurried to the cupboard, and took from it the remainder of the poison he had given to Ada’s dog; then turning to the astonished bear warden, he said,—
“Remember, we shall meet again.”
He rapidly then descended the staircase, and was out of the house before the man could answer him.
“Well, if ever I knew the like o’ that!” said the bear warden. “Popsy!”
The bear answered with a growl, “We’re dropped into a furnished house, and nothing to pay. The blessed world’s a beginning to find out our merits, it is!”