“I want to tell you—you are an old ass.”
The words still sounding in his ears made him turn again to the name Plinlimon. The contrast between Lady Plinlimon and the girl, whose vision dominated his mind, rose up again sharply at sight of the printed name.
Ass! That name did not apply to Rochester. To fit him with an appropriate pseudonym would be impossible. Fool, idiot, sumph—Jones tried them all on the image of the defunct, but they were too small.
“Plinlimon: 3rd Baron,” read Jones, “created 1831, Albert James, b. March 10th, 1862. O. S. of second Baron and Julia d. of J. H. Thompson of Clifton, m. Sapphira, d. of Marcus Mulhausen, educ. privately. Address The Roost, Tite Street, Chelsea.”
Mulhausen! He almost dropped the book. Mulhausen! Collins, his office, and that terrible family party all rose up before him. Here was the scamp who had diddled Rochester out of the coal mine, the father of the woman who had diddled him out of thousands. The paragraph in “Who’s Who” turned from printed matter to a nest of wriggling vipers. He threw the book on the table, rose up, and began to pace the floor.
The girl-wife in the Victoria, his own position—everything was forgotten, before the monstrous fact half guessed, half seen.
Rochester had been plucked right and left by these harpies. He had received five thousand pounds for land worth a million from the father, he had paid eight thousand, or a good part of eight thousand to the daughter. Fine business that!
I compared Jones, when he was fighting Voles, to a terrier. He had a good deal of the terrier in his composition, the honesty, the rooting out instinct, and the fury before vermin. Men run in animal groups, and if you study animals you will be surprised by nothing so much as the old race fury that breaks out in the most civilized animal before the old race quarry or enemy.
For a few seconds, as he paced the floor, Jones was in the mental condition of a dog in proximity to a hutched badger. Then he began to think clearly. The obvious fact before him was that Voles, the Plinlimons and Mulhausen were a gang; the presumptive fact was that the money paid in blackmail had gone back to Mulhausen, or at least a great part of it.
Was Mulhausen the spider of the web? Were all the rest his tools and implements?