On a rickety old sofa lay the present proprietor of the apartment, dozing gently at noontide, with the Daily Telegraph slipping from his loosened grasp. The remains of a bachelor breakfast, a half-empty eggshell, a fragment of toast, and a cracked coffee-cup, indicated that he had but lately taken his morning meal.
He lifted himself lazily from the crumpled pillow, and confronted his visitor with a prolonged and audible yawn.
‘Dear boy!’ he exclaimed, ‘what an untimely hour! What has happened that you are astir so early?’
He was not a common-looking man. He was tall, broad, and deep of chest, with lean, muscular arms, an aquiline nose, large and somewhat prominent eyes, bloodshot and tarnished by long years of evil experience, thin iron-gray hair, worn unduly long to conceal its scantiness, a complexion of a dull leaden hue, stained with patches of bistre—the complexion of a man to whom fresh air was an unusual luxury—thin lips, a high, narrow forehead. He wore a threadbare frock coat, closely buttoned, a frayed black satin stock, gray trousers, tightly strapped over well-worn boots, boots that had begun their career as dress boots.
Despite the shabbiness of his attire the man looked every inch a gentleman. That he was a gentleman who had fallen about as low as gentle breeding can fall, outside the Old Bailey, there was no doubt. Vice had set its mark upon him so deeply that the brand of crime itself could scarcely have done more to separate him from respectability. A man must have been very young indeed, and utterly unlearned in the experience of life, who would have trusted Mr. Desrolles in any virtuous enterprise. But Jack Chicot showed himself by no means wanting in penetration when he pitched upon Mr. Desrolles as a likely instrument for doing dirty work. He was the material of which the French mouchard is made.
‘I’ve been worried, Desrolles,’ answered Jack, dropping wearily into a chair.
‘My dear fellow, the normal condition of life is worry,’ replied Desrolles, languidly. ‘The wisest of Jews knew all about it. Man was born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. The most that philosophy can suggest is to take trouble easily, as I do. All the Juggernaut cars of life have gone over me, but I am not crushed.’
The tone was at once friendly and familiar. Jack Chicot and the second-floor lodger had become acquainted very soon after the Chicots’ advent in Cibber Street. They met each other on the stairs, first smiled, then nodded, then loitered to discuss and generally to anathematise the weather, then went a little further, and talked about the events of the day—the shocking murder recorded in the morning paper—the fire down Millwall way—the chances of war, or disturbances in the political atmosphere. By-and-by Jack Chicot asked Desrolles into his room, and they played a hand or two at écarté—first-rate players both—for three-penny points. Soon the écarté became an institution, and they played two or three times a week, while La Chicot was standing on the tips of her satin-shod toes, and enchanting the gilded youth of the capital. Jack found his acquaintance a man of infinite resources and wide experience. He had begun life in a good social position, had—according to his own account—distinguished himself as a soldier under such men as Gough and Hardinge; and had descended slowly, step by step, to be the thing he was. That gradual descent had carried him through scenes so strange and varied that his experiences of all that is oddest and worst in life would have made a book as big as ‘Les Misérables.’ And the creature knew how to talk. He never told the same story twice. Jack sometimes fancied this must be because he invented his stories upon the spot, and forgot them immediately afterwards. The man was no pretender to virtues which he did not possess, but rather advertised his vices. The only redeeming qualities he affected were a recklessness in money matters, which he appeared to consider generosity, and a rough-and-ready notion of honour, such as is supposed to obtain among thieves. Jack tolerated, despised, and allowed himself to be amused by the man. If he had been a king he would have liked such a fellow to lounge beside his throne, dressed in motley, flinging Rabelaisian witticisms in the smug faces of the courtiers.
‘What’s the particular trouble to-day, Jack?’ asked Desrolles, selecting a meerschaum from the litter on the mantelpiece, and lazily filling the blackened bowl. ‘Financial, I conclude.’
‘No. I am anxious about my wife.’