Thus speaking, the ruffian secured his share of the spoil about his person—an example that was immediately followed by Mrs. Mortimer in respect to her division;—and all the while Vitriol Bob sate looking on with a countenance of the most demoniac ferocity. It was evident that, could the wretch release himself from his bonds, his rage would endow him with a strength calculated to give matters quite another turn: but he was helpless—powerless,—and this consciousness of his enthralled predicament only rendered his hatred the more savage against his successful enemies, and made his longings for revenge the more eager and also the more torturing on account of their unavailing intensity.
“I will now tell you, Bob,” said Jack Rily, turning towards him, “why I have played you this trick—and you will acknowledge that it is only tit for tat. You remember the swell’s crib we broke into at Peckham? Well—you found a bag containing a hundred and twenty sovereigns, in a drawer—and you never mentioned a word about it when we came to divide the plunder.”
“It’s a lie—a damned lie!” ejaculated the villain, ferociously.
“Say that again,” cried the Doctor, his hare-lip becoming absolutely white with rage, while the scar upon his cheek grew crimson,—“and I will cut your throat from ear to ear. How could I invent such a tale? But I saw the advertisement in the papers about the robbery—I read that a bag containing a hundred and twenty pounds in gold was abstracted from a chest of drawers—and I well remembered that you searched those drawers, and afterwards assured me there was nothing in them worth taking. I did not tell you that I had thus become aware of your treachery, because I resolved to be revenged some day or other. That day has now arrived—and you have the consolation of knowing that you have lost thousands in consequence of your beggarly meanness respecting a paltry sixty sovereigns, which was my share of the sum you kept back.”
“Well—’sposing it is all as you say, Jack,” exclaimed Vitriol Bob, assuming a humble and indeed abject tone,—“ain’t you more than even with me to-night? and won’t you let me have my reglars? We shall then be good friends again.”
“I do not mean to give you one farthing of my money—and I know this old lady won’t,” responded the Doctor. “As to our being friends again, I care not whether we become so, or whether we continue enemies. You can’t do me so much harm as I can you, Bob,” added Rily, in an impressive manner, and without a particle of his usual coarse jocularity: “for you have to-night done a deed that, if known, would send you to the scaffold.”
A deadly pallor passed over the countenance of the murderer; and he writhed in his chair with mingled rage and terror.
“Now, my old hyena,” exclaimed the doctor, turning towards Mrs. Mortimer, “I told you that you should have a good opportunity of seeing Vitriol Bob in all his hideousness. Which do you think is the ugliest of the two—he or me?”
And he grinned so horribly with his hare-lip and his gleaming teeth, that the old woman was for an instant appalled by the fiendish, malignant joy that caused his countenance thus to assume so frightful an expression.
“Well—you don’t like to pass an opinion upon the matter,” he said, with a chuckling laugh: “may be you think I am the ugliest of the two, and that it would hurt my feelings to tell me so. Lord bless you, my dear madam—a right down savage, ferocious, revolting ugliness is a splendid subject for admiration to my mind. The uglier people are—provided it’s the right sort of ugliness—the handsomer they are in my eyes. This may seem paradoxical—but it’s the truth; and it’s on that principle I am ready to marry you to-morrow, if you’ll have me. However—think upon it: there’s no hurry for your decision, my dear creature—pardon me for being so familiar. And now I may as well tell you that it was not my original intention to let you have one penny piece of all that swag,” he continued, after a few moments’ pause. “I had purposed to make use of you in obtaining it—and then self-appropriate it; because I didn’t look upon you in the light of a pal with whom it was necessary to keep faith. The moment, however, that you interfered in the struggle just now, the case became suddenly altered: you saved my life—and I wouldn’t harm a hair of your head for all the world. So you are quite welcome to take your departure at once if you will: but I should esteem it a mark of confidence if you’d remain here with me a few hours longer—and I’ll tell you why.”