"It must have been her!" said he, ungrammatically but emphatically, at the same time bringing his fist down heavily on the table to express his assertion.
"What must have been her, Griffiths?" inquired Mr. Effingham, who was growing irritated by the extremely independent tone of his usually deferential subordinate,--"why don't you talk out, instead of snuffling to yourself and makin' those faces at me? What must have been her?"
Successful though he was for the time being, Mr. Griffiths had been too long subservient to the angry little man who addressed him to be able to shake off his bonds. He fell back into his old state of submission, grumbling as he said:
"You're a naggin' me as usual, D'Ossay, you are! Can't let a cove think for a minute and try and recollect what he'd 'eard,--you can't. What I was tryin' to bring back was this--there's a cove as I know, a theatrical gent, gets engagements for lakers and that, and provides managers of provincial gaffs with companies and so on. He was down at Hull, he was, and he come into our place one night with Mr. Munmorency of the T. R. there, as often give us a look up; and when business was over--we was rather slack that night--we went round to his 'otel to have a glass. And while we was drinkin' it and talkin' over old times, he says to me, 'Wasn't you in a swim with old Lyons and Tony Butler once?' he says. 'Not once,' I says, 'but a good many times,' I says. 'I thought so,' he says; 'and wasn't there a handsome gal named Ponsford, did a lot of business for them?' he says. 'There was,' I says; 'fortune-tellin' and Mysterious-Lady business, and all that gaff,' I says. 'That's it,' he says; 'I couldn't think where I'd seen her before.' 'When did you see her last?' I says. 'About three weeks ago,' he says, 'she come to me on a matter of business, and claimed acquaintance with me; and though I knew the face and the name, I could not think where I had seen her before.'"
"Didn't you ask him anything more about her?" said Mr. Effingham.
"No, I didn't. 'Twas odd, wasn't it? but I didn't. You see I wasn't on your lay then, D'Ossay, my boy, and I was rather tired with hookin' in the 'arf-crowns and calclatin' the bettin' on the ins and outs, and I was enjoyin' my smoke and lookin' forward to my night's rest."
"What a sleepy-headed cove you are, Griffiths!" said Mr. Effingham with great contempt. "What do you tell me this for, if this is to be the end?"
"But this ain't to be the end, D'Ossay, dear! Mr. Trapman's come back by this time, I dessay, and we'll go and look him up to-morrow and see whether he can tell us anything of any real good about this gal. He's a first-rate hand is Trapman, as knowin' as a ferret; and it won't do to let him know what our game is, else he might go in and spoil it and work it for himself. So just you hold your tongue, if we see him, D'Ossay, and leave me to manage the palaver with him."
Mr. Effingham gave an ungracious assent to his companion's suggestion, and, practical always, asked him to name a time for this meeting on the next day. Mr. Griffiths suggested twelve o'clock as convenient for a glass of ale and a biscuit, and for finding Mr. Trapman at home. So the appointment was made for that hour; and after a little chat on subjects irrelevant to the theme of this story, the worthy pair parted.
The biscuit and the--several--glasses of ale had been discussed the next day, and Mr. Griffiths was maunderingly hinting his desire to remain at Johnson's for some time longer, when Mr. Effingham, burning with impatience, and with the semblance of authority in him, insisted upon his quondam parasite, but present equal, convoying him to the interview with Mr. Trapman. Mr. Trapman's Dramatic Agency Office, so notified in blue letters on a black board, was held at the Pizarro Coffee-house in Beak Street, Drury Lane. A dirty, bygone, greasy, used-up little place the Pizarro Coffee-house, with its fly-blown playbills banging over its wire-blind, its greasy coffee-stained lithograph of Signor Poleno, the celebrated clown, with his performing dogs; its moss-covered basket, which looked as if it had been made in a property-room, containing two obviously fictitious eggs. The supporters of the Pizarro were Mr. Trapman's clients, and Mr. Trapman's clients became perforce supporters of the Pizarro. When an actor was, as he described it, "out of collar," he haunted Beak Street, took "one of coffee and a rasher" at the Pizarro, and entered his name on Mr. Trapman's books. The mere fact of undergoing that process seemed to revivify him at once. He was on Trapman's books, and would probably be summoned at an hour's notice to give 'em his Hamlet at South Shields: a capital fellow, Trapman!--safe to get something through him; and then the candidate for provincial histrionic honour would poodle his hair under his hat and take a glance at himself in the strip of looking-glass that adorned the window of the Roscius' Head, and would wonder when that heiress who should see him from the stage-box O.P., and faint on her mother's neck, exclaiming, "Fitzroy Bellville for my husband, or immediate suicide for me!" would arrive.