“You are Mr. Snark, I understand?” I said, somewhat clumsily, I fear.
“Call me plain Snark,” says he, with his horrid little eyes glistening at a golden candlestick.
“Well, Mr. Plain Snark,” I nervously began, and then stopped and whispered urgently to Mrs. Emblem: “For heaven’s sake stay here and keep your eye upon him! If I were to be left alone with him I’m certain that inside twenty minutes he would strangle me, pawn the furniture, and sell my body to the surgeons!”
The ears of my visitor were so acute, it seemed that they must have caught a hint of what I said, for he looked at me and remarked with considerable emphasis and pride:
“Snark mayn’t be a picture-book to look at, not a Kneller as it were, but he’s a bit of a hartiss in ’is ’umble way. And modest too is good old Snark. He’d no more use cold cream and lavender for to beautify his skin than he’d rob an orphing boy.”
Yet as he spoke his eyes still travelled over me and my belongings in a fashion that made me wish already that I could forget him as one does an evil dream. But there was most instant business to transact, and to fail to do it now was to forfeit the life of one exceeding dear. Therefore this thought gave me the courage to say:
“I have sent for you, Mr. Snark, in the hope that you will undertake a delicate matter on my behalf; a most delicate matter, I might say.”
“A reg’lar tantaliser, as it were?” says Mr. Snark.
“Yes,” says I, “a regular tantaliser, Mr. Snark.”
“Well, now you know,” says Mr. Snark, “Snark’s blue death on tantalisers—a plain job’s not a bit o’ good to Snark. There’s lots o’ the perfession can undertake a plain job just as well as Snark, and charges lesser. But in the higher branches, as they says at Bow Street, there’s none like good old Snark. Why, that man fair takes a pride in the higher branches. Just look at the case o’ William Milligan. Talk about hartistic! Why, Miss, the case of William Milligan was the wonder o’ the age.”