“Not till I had your orders,” returned the attendant.
“Right, Frank; people can never be too guarded; but Sloman’s a safe hand, and we have done a good stroke of business together before now. It must be plate or jewels;—and yet I was talking to an old cracksman this very evening, and if there had been a smash last night of any consequence he would have been safe to know it and tell me. Unlock the wicket, Frank—and then slip over to the Fortune of War, and try if you can get any intelligence.”
The hunchback disappeared; and during his absence, Mr. Brown divided his attention pretty equally between the contents of Mr. Sloman’s epistle and those of the decanter at his elbow. In a quarter of an hour, the hunchback’s key was heard turning in the street-door lock,—and he presently announced, that, having made diligent inquiries from several professional gentlemen who were refreshing themselves in the back parlour of the Fortune of War, he was then and there assured, that nothing had been done the preceding evening but the usual theatrical business—with the exception of a silver coffee-pot, that had been abstracted from a west-end hotel.
Another quarter of an hour passed—a church-bell chimed—nine was sounded from the belfry; and, ere the clock ceased striking, steps were heard upon the stairs, and “the thing of legs and arms” announced “Mr. Sloman.”
The expected visitor was a large, corpulent, clumsy-looking nondescript, with a hooked nose, and light complexion, that rendered it impossible to decide whether he should be classed as Jew or Gentile.
At Mr. Brown’s invitation he took a chair, filled a glass, ventured a remark touching the present state of the weather, and ended with an eulogy on the wine.
[Original]
“It should be capital, for it comes directly from the cellar of a noble lord, who is considered to be as good a judge of port as any man in England,”—said Mr. Brown; “his head butler and I do business pretty extensively. He’s always hard up, his woman is so desperately extravagant; for actresses are always expensive cattle, as you know. I have recommended him to take a rib; but he can’t stand matrimony, he says,—at the west-end, it’s reckoned so infernally vulgar.”