VI.

FURNISHED with elaborate instructions to guide him, which included golden materials for bribery, a young Jew holding the place of third clerk in the office of Dick’s lawyer was sent to the town of Grailey to make discoveries. In the matter of successfully instituting private inquiries, he was justly considered to be a match for any two Christians who might try to put obstacles in his way. His name was Moses Jackling.

Entering the cigar-shop, the Jew discovered that he had presented himself at a critical moment.

A girl and a man were standing behind the counter. The girl looked like a maid-of-all-work: she was rubbing the tears out of her eyes with a big red fist. The man, smart in manner and shabby in dress, received the stranger with a peremptory eagerness to do business. “Now, then! what for you?” Jackling bought the worst cigar he had ever smoked, in the course of an enormous experience of bad tobacco, and tried a few questions with this result. The girl had lost her place; the man was in “possession”; and the stock and furniture had been seized for debt. Jackling thereupon assumed the character of a creditor, and ask to speak with the mistress.

“She’s too ill to see you, sir,” the girl said.

“Tell the truth, you fool,” cried the man in possession. He led the way to a door with a glass in the upper part of it, which opened into a parlor behind the shop. As soon as his back was turned, Jackling whispered to the maid, “When I go, slip out after me; I’ve got something for you.” The man lifted the curtain over the glass. “Look through,” he said, “and see what’s the matter with her for yourself.”

Jackling discovered the mistress flat on her back on the floor, helplessly drunk. That was enough for the clerk—so far. He took leave of the man in possession, with the one joke which never wears out in the estimation of Englishmen; the joke that foresees the drinker’s headache in the morning. In a minute or two more the girl showed herself, carrying an empty jug. She had been sent for the man’s beer, and she was expected back directly. Jackling, having first overwhelmed her by a present of five shillings, proposed another appointment in the evening. The maid promised to be at the place of meeting; and in memory of the five shillings she kept her word.

“What wages do you get?” was the first question that astonished her.

“Three pounds a year, sir,” the unfortunate creature replied.

“All paid?”

“Only one pound paid—and I say it’s a crying shame.”

“Say what you like, my dear, so long as you listen to me. I want to know everything that your mistress says and does—first when she’s drunk, and then when she’s sober. Wait a bit; I haven’t done yet. If you tell me everything you can remember—mind everything—I’ll pay the rest of your wages.”

Madly excited by this golden prospect, the victim of domestic service answered inarticulately with a scream. Jackling’s right hand and left hand entered his pockets, and appeared again holding two sovereigns separately between two fingers and thumbs. From that moment, he was at liberty to empty the maid-of-all-work’s memory of every saying and doing that it contained.

The sober moments of the mistress yielded little or nothing to investigation. The report of her drunken moments produced something worth hearing. There were two men whom it was her habit to revile bitterly in her cups. One of them was Mr. Evelin, whom she abused—sometimes for the small allowance that he made to her; sometimes for dying before she could prosecute him for bigamy. Her drunken remembrances of the other man were associated with two names. She called him “Septimus”; she called him “Darts”; and she despised him occasionally for being a “common sailor.” It was clearly demonstrated that he was one man, and not two. Whether he was “Septimus,” or whether he was “Darts,” he had always committed the same atrocities. He had taken her money away from ............