Trevelyan passed on moodily and alone from Turin to Venice, always expecting letters from Bozzle, and receiving from time to time the dispatches which that functionary forwarded to him, as must be acknowledged, with great punctuality. For Mr Bozzle did his work, not only with a conscience, but with a will. He was now, as he had declared more than once, altogether devoted to Mr Trevelyan’s interest; and as he was an active, enterprising man, always on the alert to be doing something, and as he loved the work of writing dispatches, Trevelyan received a great many letters from Bozzle. It is not exaggeration to say that every letter made him for the time a very wretched man. This ex-policeman wrote of the wife of his bosom, of her who had been the wife of his bosom, and who was the mother of his child, who was at this very time the only woman whom he loved with an entire absence of delicacy. Bozzle would have thought reticence on his part to he dishonest. We remember Othello’s demand of Iago. That was the demand which Bozzle understood that Trevelyan had made of him, and he was minded to obey that order. But Trevelvan, though he had in truth given the order, was like Othello also in this that he would have preferred before all the prizes of the world to have had proof brought home to him exactly opposite to that which he demanded. But there was nothing so terrible to him as the grinding suspicion that he was to be kept in the dark. Bozzle could find out facts. Therefore he gave, in effect, the same order that Othello gave and Bozzle went to work determined to obey it. There came many dispatches to Venice, and at last there came one, which created a correspondence which shall be given here at length. The first is a letter from Mr Bozzle to his employer:

‘55, Stony Walk, Union Street, Borough,

September 29, 186-, 4.30 p.m.

HOND. SIR,

Since I wrote yesterday morning, something has occurred which, it may be, and I think it will, will help to bring this melancholy affair to a satisfactory termination and conclusion. I had better explain, Mr Trewilyan, how I have been at work from the beginning about watching the Colonel. I couldn’t do nothing with the porter at the Albany, which he is always mostly muzzled with beer, and he wouldn’t have taken my money, not on the square. So, when it was tellegrammed to me as the Colonel was on the move in the North, I put on two boys as knows the Colonel, at eighteenpence a day, at each end, one Piccadilly end, and the other Saville Row end, and yesterday morning, as quick as ever could be, after the Limited Express Edinburgh Male Up was in, there comes the Saville Row End Boy here to say as the Colonel was lodged safe in his downey. Then I was off immediate myself to St. Diddulph’s, because I knows what it is to trust to inferiors when matters gets delicate. Now, there hadn’t been no letters from the Colonel, nor none to him as I could make out, though that mightn’t be so sure. She might have had ’em addressed to A. Z., or the like of that, at any of the Post-offices as was distant, as nobody could give the notice to ’em all. Barring the money, which I know ain’t an object when the end is so desirable, it don’t do to be too ubiketous, because things will go astray. But I’ve kept my eye uncommon open, and I don’t think there have been no letters since that last which was sent, Mr Trewilyan, let any of ’em, parsons or what not, say what they will. And I don’t see as parsons are better than other folk when they has to do with a lady as likes her fancy-man.’

Trevelyan, when he had read as far as this, threw down the letter and tore his hair in despair. ‘My wife,’ he exclaimed, ‘Oh, my wife!’ But it was essential that he should read Bozzle’s letter, and he persevered.

‘Well; I took to the ground myself as soon as ever I heard that the Colonel was among us, and I hung out at the Full Moon. They had been quite on the square with me at the Full Moon, which I mention, because, of course, it has to be remembered, and it do come up as a hitem. And I’m proud, Mr Trewilyan, as I did take to the ground myself; for what should happen but I see the Colonel as large as life ringing at the parson’s bell at 1.47 p.m. He was let in at 1.49, and he was let out at 2.17. He went away in a cab which it was kept, and I followed him till he was put down at the Arcade, and I left him having his ‘ed washed and greased at Trufitt’s rooms, half-way up. It was a wonder to me when I see this, Mr Trewilyan, as he didn’t have his ‘ed done first, as they most of ’em does when they’re going to see their ladies; but I couldn’t make nothing of that, though I did try to put too and too together, as I always does.

What he did at the parson’s, Mr Trewilyan, I won’t say I saw, and I won’t say I know. It’s my opinion the young woman there isn’t on the square, though she’s been remembered too, and is a hitem of course. And, Mr Trewilyan, it do go against the grain with me when they’re remembered and ain’t on the square. I doesn’t expect too much of Human Nature, which is poor, as the saying goes; but when they’re remembered and ain’t on the square after that, it’s too bad for Human Nature. It’s more than poor. It’s what I calls beggarly.

He ain’t been there since, Mr Trewilyan, and he goes out of town tomorrow by the 1.15 p.m. express to Bridport. So he lets on; but of course I shall see to that. That he’s been at St. Diddulph’s, in the house from 1.47 to 2.17, you may take as a fact. There won’t be no shaking of that, because I have it in my mem. book, and no Counsel can get the better of it. Of course he went there to see her, and it’s my belief he did. The young woman as was remembered says he didn’t, but she isn’t on the square. They never is when a lady wants to see her gentleman, though they comes round afterwards, and tells up everything when it comes before his ordinary lordship.

If you ask me, Mr Trewilyan, I don’t think it’s ripe yet for the court, but we’ll have it ripe before long. I’ll keep a look-out, because it’s just possible she may leave town. If she do, I’ll be down upon them together, and no mistake.

Yours most respectful,

S. BOZZLE.’

Every word in the letter had been a dagger to Trevelyan, and yet he felt himself to be under an obligation to the man who had written it. No one else would or could make facts known to him. If she were innocent, let him know that she were innocent, and he would proclaim her innocence, and believe in her innocence and sacrifice himself to her innocence, if such sacrifice were necessary. But if she were guilty, let him also know that. He knew how bad it was, all that bribing of postmen and maidservants, who took his money, and her money also, very likely. It was dirt, all of it. But who had put him into the dirt? His wife had, at least, deceived him had deceived him and disobeyed him, and it was necessary that he should know the facts. Life without a Bozzle would now have been to him a perfect blank.

The Colonel had been to the parsonage at St. Diddulph’s, and had been admitted! As to that he had no doubt. Nor did he really doubt that his wife had seen the visitor. He had sent his wife first into a remote village on Dartmoor, and there she had been visited by her lover! How was he to use any other word? Iago, oh, Iago! The pity of it, Iago! Then, when she had learned that this was discovered, she had left the retreat in which he had placed her without permission from him and had taken herself to the house of a relative of hers. Here she was visited again by her lover! Oh, Iago; the pity of it, Iago! And then there had been between them an almost constant correspondence. So much he had ascertained as fact; but he did not for a moment believe that Bozzle had learned all the facts. There might be correspondence, or even visits, of which Bozzle could learn nothing. How could Bozzle know where Mrs Trevelyan was during all those hours which Colonel Osborne passed in London? That which he knew, he knew absolutely, and on that he could act; but there was, of course, much of which he knew nothing. Gradually the truth would unveil itself, and then he would act. He would tear that Colonel into fragments, and throw his wife from him with all the ignominy which the law made possible to him.

But in the meantime he wrote a letter to Mr Outhouse. Colonel Osborne, after all that had been said, had been admitted at the parsonage, and Trevelyan was determined to let the clergyman know what he thought about it. The oftener he turned the matter in his mind, as he walked slowly up and down the piazza of St. Mark, the more absurd it appeared to him to doubt that his wife had seen the man. Of course she had seen him. He walked there nearly the whole night, thinking of it, and as he dragged himself off at last to his inn, had almost come to have but one desire namely, that he should find her out, that the evidence should be conclusive, that it should be proved, and so brought to an end. Then he would destroy her, and destroy that man and afterwards destroy himself, so bitter to him would be his ignominy. He almost revelled in the idea of the tragedy he would make. It was three o’clock before he was in his bedroom, and then he wrote his letter to Mr Outhouse before he took him............