“These two men, this Britton and the crafty Gray! they, indeed, are thorns among the flowers with which I would surround myself. If either could but safely destroy the other, I could then find an opportunity of getting rid of the survivor. My deepest hatred light on Gray! May the curses—pshaw! what hoots it that I curse him?—I must have his blood! ’Tis’ he, and he only, who by his craft preserves his own life, and teaches Britton how to preserve his. What devil whispered to the villain to write a confession of his crimes for his own preservation? Time was when a master-spirit such as mine could with small pains rid himself of the base lowly tools with which he built his fortune and his fame. The grave closed over the hateful secrets that embittered the road to power and greatness, leaving that power and greatness, when once achieved, undermined by the black shadows of the past. Unbounded wealth is at my command—a crouching herd at my feet, because I am the master of the yellow dross for which mankind will barter Heaven! And—and yet I—even I am to be haunted by two ruffians, who with a subtlety undreamt of, have hedged themselves in with precautions. By hell, I will not—cannot bear it!—I’ll pluck these papers from their very hearts, if they should hide them there!—I will no longer be scared by this awful phantom of fear that shadows my heart—They shall die!”
CHAPTER XIX.
Learmont’s Adventure.—A Discovery.—The Haunted House.—Exultation, and a Resolution.
In the wild excitement of his passions, Learmont had walked onwards, heedless of whither he was going, and now that he had in some measure found the relief he sought for in fatigue, he glared anxiously round to find if possible what part of the town he had strayed to in his deep abstraction.
The night was very dark, not a star peeped forth from heaven to light with its small twinkling lustre the massive black arch of the firmament. No moon shed its silvery radiance on the gigantic city;—a darkness, so intense that sky, houses, trees,—all seemed merged into one chaotic mass.
“Where should I be?” muttered Learmont; “I must have walked far, for I am weary. Ha! Is that the hour?”
The clock of St. Paul’s struck three as he spoke, and from the direction of the sound, Learmont guessed that he was somewhere southward of that edifice.
“Some chance passenger,” he muttered, “will direct me to Westminster; yet I hear no footfall in these silent streets. How still and solemn now is the great city; one might imagine it a vast cemetery, in which the dead alone dwelt.”
He paced slowly down a long straggling street, and his own footsteps were the only sounds that disturbed the solemn stillness that reigned around.
Learmont walked on slowly, for he knew not but he might be in some dangerous quarter of the city, and his suspicions that the locality in which he was did not possess any great claims to fashion or respectability were much increased by a door suddenly opening in a house some dozen yards in advance of him, and a man being flung from it with considerable force into the centre of the street, while a loud voice, exclaimed:—