"I own," said Hanbury, "I was a little staggered at first, but only at first. I am quite willing to go with you. Where shall I tell the man to drive?" Hanbury had assisted Leigh into the cab, and was standing on the flagway.
Leigh gave the address, and the two drove off.
The dwarf's confession had not benefitted his position in Hanbury's mind. The fact that this man had been in communication with a fence, with a view to the disposal of stolen gold, was enough to make the average man shrink from contact with the dwarf. But then Hanbury remembered that the secret had been divulged by the clock-maker in a moment of extreme excitement, and after what to him must have been an enormous calamity. To have been tempted is not to have fallen; but, the temptation resisted, to have risen to heights proportionate to the strength of the temptation, and the degree of self-denial in the resistance of it.
Yet, this was a strange companion, friend, for John Hanbury, the well-known public speaker, a man who had made up his mind to adopt the career of a progressive and reforming politician, the descendant of Stanislaus II. of Poland! Contact with a man who had absolutely entertained the notion of trading in stolen goods was a thing most people would shun. But, then, were most people right? This man had claimed his good offices, first, because Hanbury was in his power, and now Leigh claimed his good offices, because he was in great affliction and prostration. Certainly Hanbury would be more willing to fall in with Leigh's views now, when he was supplicating, than on Thursday, when he was threatening. Who could withhold sympathy from this deformed, marred, wheezing, halting, sickly-looking man, who had just seen the work of a lifetime swept away for ever?
Then Hanbury remembered he had questions to ask Leigh, and that his motive for keeping with him was not wholly pure. How many motives, of the most impersonal and disinterested, are quite pure?
The young man did not know how exactly to introduce the subject of the Graces, and, for a moment, he hemmed and fidgetted in the cab.
At last he began, "You have not seen Mrs. Grace, since?"
"No; nor shall I ever again."
"Why, you have not quarrelled with her, have you?"
"Quarrelled with her! Not I. But I have explained to you that I am going home, that this is a funeral; my home is not in Grimsby Street. You did not say Grimsby Street to the cabman, I hope?"