“To Number 12, sir,” replied Mrs. Probert; “and therefore Mr. Granby will please to occupy Number 7.”
“Very good,” said the Doctor. “Now, Mr. Granby, my dear friend—have the kindness to follow me.”
The request was instantaneously obeyed; and the physician conducted his docile patient into the room that had been selected for him, and which was indeed the most spacious, airy, and elegantly furnished bed-chamber in the whole establishment. It was usually appropriated to any new-comer of the first class whose friends appeared to take an interest in him; so that on the occasion of their first visit after his location in the asylum, the doctor might be enabled to show them, with pride, and even triumph, the magnificent apartment in which the patient was lodged. It was afterwards an easy matter to remove him to another and inferior, though still comfortable chamber—so as to make room for another arrival; and it was very seldom that a lunatic ever thought of mentioning to his friends, when they visited him again, the change of apartments that had taken place.
Having introduced Mr. Granby into the elegantly furnished chamber, the Doctor placed the candle upon the table, wished the young gentleman a good night’s rest, and then retired—closing, but not locking, the door behind him.
The moment he had departed, a remarkable and signal change took place in the appearance and manner of Mr. Granby. His countenance lost its stolid vacancy of expression, and became animated with its natural intelligence; and, instead of seeming a dull, drivelling idiot, he stood erect—a fine intrepid young man, conscious of the possession of superior mental faculties, and prepared to carry out effectually the scheme which had already been so successfully commenced.
Indeed, all further mystery in this respect being unnecessary, we may as well at once declare that the fictitious Mr. Granby was the real Lord William Trevelyan—and that Smithson, who had so well performed the part of an afflicted and faithful friend, was none, other than the astute valet, Fitzgeorge.
The young nobleman had made confidants of his two friends, Dr. Prince and Mr. Spicer, who at his request had drawn up and signed the certificates necessary to procure his introduction into the abode of Dr. Swinton.
We must likewise here observe that when the short colloquy had occurred between the Doctor and his housekeeper, it instantly struck Trevelyan that allusion was made by them to Sir Gilbert Heathcote as being the individual whose sleeping-place had been changed from No. 7 to No. 12. He had noticed that the woman had observed a degree of mystery in referring, in the first instance, to the late occupant of the best bed-room—and that the Doctor, as if fearful that walls had ears, or that even a lunatic (such as he believed Trevelyan to be) might learn a dangerous secret, had hastily interposed to prevent Mrs. Probert from making a more direct allusion. All these circumstances induced Trevelyan to conjecture that the late occupant of his room was none other than Sir Gilbert; and, if this were the case, he had acquired the certainty that the baronet was the tenant of a neighbouring apartment in the same corridor.
It was now eleven o’clock; and the young nobleman resolved to wait until a much later hour ere he took any steps in pursuance of the clue which he believed himself to have gained relative to the chamber occupied by his persecuted friend.
He walked to the window, and looked forth through the iron bars, upon the mass of narrow lanes and squalid alleys constituting the suburb known as Globe Town, and all the features of which were brought vividly forward in the powerful moonlight,—for the atmosphere was as bright as if it were of transparent quicksilver.