“Confidential instructions, let us say; but there are times when duty to society overrides fine feeling. I have felt that already. The die is cast. No half-and-half measures, no beating about the bush, for me. After what I saw yesterday, and the light that burst upon me, I did not act hastily—I never do, though slow coaches may have said so. I put this and that together carefully, and had my dinner, and made up my mind. And you see the result in that man on the box.”
“The cabman? Oh yes, you resolved to have a cab, and drive to those wicked informers.”
“Where are your eyes? You are generally so quick. This morning you are quite unlike yourself—so weak, so tearful, and timorous. Have you not seen that by side of the cabman there sits another man altogether? One of the most remarkable men of the age, as your dear Yankees say.”
“Not a policeman in disguise, I hope. I saw a very common, insignificant man. I thought he was the driver's groom, perhaps.”
“Hush! he hears every thing, even on this granite. He is not a policeman; if he were, a few things that disgrace the force never would happen. If the policemen of England did their duty as our soldiers do, at once I would have gone to them; my duty would have been to do so. As it is, I go to our private police, who would not exist if the force were worth a rap. Vypan, Goad, and Terryer, in spite of Goad's clumsiness, rank second. I go to the first of all these firms, and I get their very cleverest rascal.”
Major Hockin, speaking in this hoarse whisper—for he could not whisper gently—folded his arms, and then nodded his head, as much as to say, “I have settled it now. You have nothing to do but praise me.” But I was vexed and perplexed too much to trust my voice with an answer.
“The beauty of this arrangement is,” he continued, with vast complacency, “that the two firms hate one another as the devil hates—no, that won't do; there is no holy water to be found among them—well, as a snake hates a slow-worm, let us say. 'Set a thief to catch a thief' is a fine old maxim; still better when the two thieves have robbed one another.”
As he spoke, the noble stranger slipped off the driving seat without troubling the cabman to stop his jerking crawl, and he did it so well that I had no chance of observing his nimble face or form. “You are disappointed,” said the Major, which was the last thing I would have confessed. “You may see that man ten thousand times, and never be able to swear to him. Ha! ha! he is a oner!”
“I disdain such mean tricks beyond all expression,” I exclaimed, as was only natural, “and every thing connected with them. It is so low to talk of such things. But what in the world made him do it? Where does he come from, and what is his name?”
“Like all noble persons, he has got so many names that he does not know which is the right one; only his are short and theirs are long. He likes 'Jack' better than any thing else, because it is not distinctive. 'Cosmopolitan Jack,' some call him, from his combining the manners and customs, features and figures, of nearly all mankind. He gets on with every one, for every one is gratified by seeing himself reflected in him. And he can jump from one frame to another as freely as Proteus or the populace. And yet, with all that, he is perfectly honest to any allegiance he undertakes. He would not betray us to Vypan, Goad, and Terryer for your great nugget and the Castlewood estates.”