‘I see,’ said Chicot; ‘you would not like to disoblige a good customer. I dare say you know what the bracelet was meant for. Such shops as yours could hardly thrive unless they were indulgent to the vices of their patrons.’
And after launching that shaft Mr. Chicot left the shop.
He returned to his lodgings to pack a small portmanteau, and then went off to take his own pleasure. What need had such a wife as his of a husband’s care? She would not accept his advice, or be ruled by him. She had chosen her road in life, and would follow it to the fatal end. Of what avail was his weak arm to bar the path? To this daughter of the people, with her deadened conscience and indomitable will, that interposing arm was no more than a straw in her way.
‘Henceforth I have done with her,’ he said to himself. ‘The law could desire no stronger divorce between us than this which she has made. And if she does me wrong the law shall part us. I will have no mercy.’
While he was packing his portmanteau an idea flashed into his mind. It was a horrible notion, and his cheek paled at the first aspect of it, but he took it to his heart nevertheless.
He was going away, for an indefinite time, perhaps. He would set a watch upon his wife. Her audacity, her insolence, had aroused the darkest suspicions. A woman who thus openly defied him must be capable of anything.
‘Whom can I trust?’ he asked himself, pausing in his preparations, on his knees before the open portmanteau. ‘The landlady, Mrs. Evitt? No, she is sly enough, but she has too long a tongue. A glass of grog would loosen that tongue of hers at any time, and she would betray me to my wife. It must be a man. Desrolles. Yes, the very man. He has all the qualities of the trade.’
Chicot locked his portmanteau, strapped it, and carried it out on to the landing. Then he ran up to the second floor, and knocked at the door of the front room.
‘Come in,’ said a languid voice, and Jack Chicot went in.
The room smelt of brandy and stale cigars. It was shabbier and tawdrier than the sitting-room on the first floor—a sordid copy of that sordid original. There was the same attempt at finery, tarnished ormolu, gaudy chintz curtains and chair-covers, where roses and lilies were almost effaced by dirt. The cheap tapestry carpet was threadbare, a desert of arid canvas, with here and there an oasis of faded colour, which hinted at the former richness of the soil. The windows were clouded with London grime and London smoke, and lent an additional gloom to the chilly sky and the dingy street upon which they looked. The cracked and bulging ceiling was brown with the smoke of ages. Dirt was the pervading impression which the room left upon the stranger’s mind.