Part 59 (2/2)

'Hey! to be sure--a woman--I know--I remember; and he was on the point of breaking out with poor Mrs. Macnamara's secret, but recovered in time. 'That's the she fortune-teller, the witch, M. M., Mary Matchwell; 'twas one of her printed cards, you know, was found lying in Sturk's blood. Dr. Sturk, you remember, that they issued a warrant for, against our poor friend, you know.'

'Ay, ay--poor Charles--poor Nutter. Are you going to the inquest?' said Gamble; and, on a sudden, stopped short, with a look of great fear, and a little beckon of his hand forward, as if he had seen something.

There was that in Gamble's change of countenance which startled Toole, who, seeing that his glance was directed through an open door at the other end of the room, skipped from his chair and peeped through it.

There was nothing, however, visible but a tenebrose and empty pa.s.sage.

'What did you see--eh? What frightens you?' said Toole. 'One would think you saw Nutter--like--like.'

Gamble looked horribly perturbed at these words.

'Shut it,' said he, nearing the door, on which Toole's hand rested.

Toole took another peep, and did so.

'Why, there's nothing there--like--like the women down at the Mills there,' continued the doctor.

'What about the women?' enquired Gamble, not seeming to know very well what he was saying, agitated still--perhaps, intending to keep Toole talking.

'Why, the women--the maids, you know--poor Nutter's servants, down at the Mills. They swear he walks the house, and they'll have it they saw him last night.'

'Pis.h.!.+ Sir--'tis all conceit and vapours--women's fancies--a plague o'

them all. And where's poor Mrs. Nutter?' said Gamble, clapping on his c.o.c.ked-hat, and taking his cane, and stuffing two or three bundles of law papers into his coat pockets.

'At home--at the Mills. She slept at the village and so missed the ghost. The Macnamaras have been mighty kind. But when the news was told her this morning, poor thing, she would not stay, and went home; and there she is, poor little soul, breaking her heart.'

Mr. Gamble was not ceremonious; so he just threw a cursory and anxious glance round the room, clapped his hands on his coat pockets, making a bunch of keys ring somewhere deep in their caverns. And all being right--

'Come along, gentlemen,' says he, 'I'm going to lock the door;' and without looking behind him, he bolted forth abstractedly into his dusty ante-room.

'Get your cloak about you, Sir--remember your _cough_, you know--the air of the streets is sharp,' said he with a sly wink, to his ugly client, who hastily took the hint.

'Is that _coach_ at the door?' bawled Gamble to his clerks in the next room, while he locked the door of his own snuggery behind him; and being satisfied it was so, he conducted the party out by a side door, avoiding the clerks' room, and so down stairs.

'Drive to the courts,' said the attorney to the coachman; and that was all Toole learned about it that day. So he mounted his nag, and resumed his journey to Ringsend at a brisk trot.

I suppose, when he turned the key in his door, and dropped it into his breeches' pocket, the gentleman attorney a.s.sumed that he had made everything perfectly safe in his private chamber, though Toole thought he had not looked quite the same again after that sudden change of countenance he had remarked.

Now, it was a darksome day, and the windows of Mr. Gamble's room were so obscured with cobwebs, dust, and dirt, that even on a sunny day they boasted no more than a dim religious light. But on this day a cheerful man would have asked for a pair of candles, to dissipate the twilight and sustain his spirits.

He had not been gone, and the room empty ten minutes, when the door through which he had seemed to look on that unknown something that dismayed him, opened softly--at first a little--then a little more--then came a knock at it--then it opened more, and the dark shape of Charles Nutter, with rigid features and white eye-b.a.l.l.s, glided stealthily and crouching into the chamber, and halted at the table, and seemed to read the endors.e.m.e.nts of the notices that lay there.

CHAPTER LXXV.

HOW A GENTLEMAN PAID A VISIT AT THE BRa.s.s CASTLE, AND THERE READ A PARAGRAPH IN AN OLD NEWSPAPER.

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