“Ah!” returns Mr. Guppy. “See how the soot’s falling. See here, on my arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won’t blow off—smears like black fat!”
They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says it’s all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol’s Arms.
“And it was then,” resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads very near together, “that he told you of his having taken the bundle of letters from his lodger’s portmanteau?”
“That was the time, sir,” answers Tony, faintly adjusting his whiskers. “Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.”
The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.
“You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That’s the arrangement, isn’t it, Tony?” asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting his thumb-nail.
“You can’t speak too low. Yes. That’s what he and I agreed.”
“I tell you what, Tony—”
“You can’t speak too low,” says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
“I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one while it’s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.”