【英文读物】Running the Gauntlet.docx

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1、【英文读物】Running the GauntletCHAPTER I. NEWS. Throughout the length and breadth of this London of ours there were few legal firms, no matter of how old standing, doing a better, larger ready-money business than that of Moss and Moss of Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. Looked down upon? Well, one could h

2、ardly say that. Old Mr. Trivett, of the firm of Trivett, Coverdale, and Trivett of Bedford Row, who had the secrets of half the first families in England locked up in his dusty japanned boxes; young Mr. Markham, who, besides being nominally a solicitor, was a high-bailiff somewhere, and had chambers

3、 in the Albany, and rode a very maney and taily light chestnut cob in the Row; and a few others,-might shrug their shoulders when the names of Moss and Moss were mentioned; but that did no harm to Moss and Moss, who, on the whole, were very well respected throughout the profession. At Mrs. Edward Mo

4、sss Sunday-evening parties in the Regents Park were to be met many people whose names were pleasantly familiar to the public. Mr. Smee, Q. C., known as Alibi Smee from his great success in proving that his clients never had been within fifty miles of the spot where the crime with which they were cha

5、rged was committed; Mr. Sergeant Orson; Mr. Tocsin, who bullied a witness admirably, but who gave more trouble to Edward Moss than any other man at the bar, wanting perpetual cramming and suggestions, and having the face of brass and the lungs of steel and the head of wool; Mr. Replevin, the most ri

6、sing junior at the O.B.; and others, amongst them. Gilks, the marine painter, some of whose choicest bits adorned Mrs. Mosss walls; Kreese, the editor of the great sporting, literary, and theatrical Sunday print, The Scourge; OMeara of the Stock Exchange; and actors, actresses, and singers too numer

7、ous to mention. These last were invited through Mr. Marshall Moss, Edwards brother and junior partner, who was a bachelor, and who, though he gave occasional excellent Greenwich and Richmond dinners, yet had no house of his own to entertain in. Marshall Moss attended to the more convivial portion of

8、 the clients; the actors who had differed from their managers; the ladies who wanted certain settlements arranged; the sporting publicans who wanted the screw put upon certain parties; the fast young gents requiring defence from civil process,-were shown up to Marshalls room on the first-floor, a co

9、mfortable room with several armchairs, and a cupboard never without sherry and soda-water; a room where some of the best stories in London were from time to time told, and which was fenced off with thick double doors, to prevent the laughter caused by them penetrating to Edwards sanctum downstairs.

10、For Edward attended to the real clients of the house-those for whom it was originally established-those by whom its fame had been made. And these were-thieves. Yes, there is no blinking the word. If a burglar were in trouble, if a forger had been apprehended, if some very heavy turf-robbery had come

11、 to light, Edward Mosss busy brain was at work, and Edward Mosss hours of sleep were ruthlessly curtailed. He did not care about the heaviest kind of business, though two or three murderers unquestionably owed their necks to his skill and forethought; and he refused all petty cases of magsmen, skitt

12、le-sharps, and card-swindlers. They would have longed to have him; but they knew it was impossible. He did not like their style of business, and, above all things fatal to a chance of their engaging him, he never did anything on spec. When a man was in trouble he knew that it was no use sending for

13、Mr. Moss without being able to tell him that at such-and-such a tavern or lodging-house he would find a landlord willing and ready to advance the fee for the prisoners defence. Then Mr. Moss would step into the first hansom outside the station, and hie away to St. Lukes, Cripplegate, Drury Lane, or

14、any other locality indicated, and returning with the money in his pocket, would hear all that the prisoner had to say, and straightway-determine on the line of defence. A wonderful little man, Edward Moss! wonderful to look at! without the smallest sign of colour in his shrunken, baggy, parchmenty f

15、ace, with small gray eyes under overhanging bristly brows, with a short stubbly head of gray hair, a restless twitching mouth, thin wiry figure, and dirty hands with close-bitten dubby nails. In these respects a very different man from his brother Marshall, who was a by-no-means bad-looking Hebrew,

16、with a handsome beard and moustache, full scarlet lips, prominent brown eyes, and in face and figure showing a general liking for the flesh-pots and other good things of this life. Where Edward Moss wore dirt, Marshall Moss sported jewelry, and each brother was sufficiently vain of his display. Each

17、 knew his business perfectly, and neither interfered with the other. Marshalls clients drove up in broughams or rattled in hansoms to the front-door, went up the broad staircase to the first-floor, and either passed straight into the presence, or beguiled the necessary interval in the perusal of the

18、 daily papers handed to them by obsequious clerks. Edwards clients sneaked in through a narrow door up a side-court; had their names and business wrung from them by the most precocious and most truculent of Jew boys; were left to rub their greasy shoulders up and down the whitewashed walls of a ghas

19、tly waiting-room until Mithter Edward chose to listen to the recital of their distress and wishes. Occasionally, however, visitors to Mr. Edward Moss came in at the large front-door, and afterwards made the best of their way to his sanctum. They were generally people who would not have been regarded

20、 with much favour by the greasy-shouldered clients in the court. This was one of them who entered Cursitor Street on a warm June afternoon, and made straight for the front-door blazing with the door-plate of Moss and Moss. A middle-sized fattish man, ill-dressed in an ill-fitting blue frock-coat and

21、 gray trousers, and a very innocent-looking small hat with a black mourning-band; a sodden-faced sleepy-looking man with mild blue eyes and an undecided mouth; a man like a not very prosperous publican; a man, who, with a fresher complexion, and at another time of year, might have been taken for a v

22、isitor to the Cattle Show; who looked, in fact, anything but what he was-chief officer of the City detectives and the terror of all the evil-doers of the East-end. He walked through the hall, and, leaving the staircase leading to Mr. Marshall Mosss rooms on his right, passed to the end of the passag

23、e and tapped at a door on which was inscribed the word Private in large letters. It must have been a peculiar knock which he gave, for the door was immediately opened merely wide enough to admit him, and closed as he passed through. Ah, ah! said a little man in an enormous pair of spectacles; ah, ah

24、! ith you, inthpector! The governorth been athkin after you to-day. Letth have a look, he continued, lifting a corner of a green-baize curtain; ah! heth jutht shakin off that troublethome perjury. Now Ill give him your name. This was Mr. Amedroz, Edward Mosss right-hand man, who knew all his masters

25、 secrets, and who was so reticent that he never opened his mouth where he could convey as much by writing. So Mr. Amedroz inscribed Stellfox in large round-text on a slip of paper, laid it before his principal, and, receiving an affirmative nod, ushered the inspector into the presence. Morning, Stel

26、lfox, said Mr. Edward, glancing up from a mass of papers in front of him; report? Inspector Stellfox, unbuttoning his blue frock-coat, produced from his breast-pocket a thick notebook, and commenced: Sorry to say, nothing new about Captain Congreve, sir. Weve tried- Now look here, Stellfox, interrup

27、ted Mr. Moss; youve had that business in hand a fortnight. If you dont report by Wednesday, Ill give that to Scotland Yard. Your men are getting lazy, and Ill try what Sir Richard Maynes people can do. What next? Crestfallen, Inspector Stellfox continued,-Slimy William, sir. Well, said Mr. Moss keen

28、ly, what of him? I think thats all right, sir. Weve found out where his mother lives,-Shads Row, Wapping, No. 3; bill up in the window, a room to let. If youve no objection, one of my men shall take that room, sir, and try and work it that way. No, said Mr. Moss; must put a woman in there. Dont you

29、know a woman up to that sort of thing? Theres Hodders wife, sir, as helped us in Charltons case; shed do. I recollect; shell do well. Furnished or unfurnished? Unfurnished room, sir. All right; hire some furniture of the broker. Tell Mrs. Hodder to get in at once. Widow; or husband employed on railw

30、ay in the country. Must keep a gin-bottle always open, and be generous with it. Old lady will talk over her drink; and Mrs. Hodder must find out where Slimy William is, what name hes going under, and must notice what letters old lady receives. Tell her to take a child with her. Has she got a child?

31、Not of her own, sir. Never mind; must get one of some one elses. Must see you, or one of your men, every morning. Child will want air-excuse for her taking him out. If Slimy William is coming home on the sudden, child must be taken ill in the middle of the night; she can take it to the doctor, and c

32、ome down to you. Right, sir. Now about Coping Crossman. Well? Markham will have him to-night, sir. That girl Liza Burdon blew his gaff for him last night. Hes a comic singer, he is. Goes by the name of Munmorency, and sings at the Cambridge Music-hall. Good! What of Mitford? Well, nothing yet, sir.

33、Youre hard upon me, Mr. Moss, and that you are. Weve only had that case three days, and youre expecting information already. Stellfox, said Mr. Moss rising, and taking a sonorous pinch of snuff, you detectives are mere shams. Youve been spoilt by the penny press, and the shilling books, and all that

34、. You think youre wonderful fellows, and you know nothing-literally nothing. If I didnt do your work as well as my own, where should we be? Dont answer; listen! Mitford has been three times within the last week to the Crown coffee-house in Doctors Commons. Theres very little doubt that hell go there

35、 again; for its a quiet house, and he seems to like it. Youve got his description; be off at once. Inspector Stellfox had transacted too much business with Mr. Edward Moss to expect any further converse, so he took up the childs hat and quietly bowed and departed. To say that of all the intensely-qu

36、iet and respectable houses in that strange portion of the City of London known as Doctors Commons the Crown coffee-house is the most quiet and respectable, is making a strong assertion, but one which could yet be borne out by facts. It is a sleepy, dreamy neighbourhood still, although its original i

37、ntense dulness has been somewhat enlivened by the pedestrians who make Pauls Chain a passage to the steamboats calling at Pauls Wharf; and the hansom cabs which find a short cut down Great St. Andrews Hill to the South-Western Railway. But it is still the resort of abnormal individuals,-ticket-porte

38、rs, to wit; plethoric individuals in half-dirty white aprons and big badges like gigantic opera-checks, men whose only use seems to be to warn approaching vehicles of the blocking-up of the narrow streets; and sable-clad mottled-faced proctors and their clerks. There are real green trees in Doctors

39、Commons; and flies and butterflies-by no means bad imitations of the real country insect-are seen there on the wing in the sultry summer days, buzzing round the heads of the ticket-porters, and of the strong men who load the Bottle Companys heavy carts, and who are always flinging huge fragments of

40、rusty iron into the capacious hold of the Mary Anne of Goole, stuck high and dry in the mud off Pauls Wharf before mentioned. Life is rampant in the immediate vicinity,-in enormous Manchester warehouses, perpetually inhaling the contents of enormous Pickfords vans; in huge blocks of offices where th

41、e representatives of vast provincial firms take orders and transact business; in corn-stores and iron-companies; in mansions filled from basement to roof with Dresden china and Bohemian glass in insurance-offices and banks; and in the office of the great journal, where the engines for six days out o

42、f the seven, are unceasingly throbbing. But in the Commons life gives way to mere existence and vegetation. The organ-man plays unmolested on Addle Hill, and the childrens shuttlecocks flutter in Wardrobe Place; no Pickfords vans disturb the calm serenity of Great Knightrider Street; and instead of

43、warehouses and offices, there are quaint old dumpy congregationless churches, big rambling old halls of City Companies, the forgotten old Heralds College with its purposeless traditions, a few apparently nothing-doing shops, a number of proctors offices into which man is never seen to enter, and two

44、 or three refreshment-rooms. Of these the Crown is the oldest and the dirtiest. It was established-if you may trust the half-effaced legend over its door-in 1790, and it has ever since been doing the same quiet sleepy trade. It cannot understand what Kammerers means by it. Kammerers is the refreshme

45、nt-house at the corner, which has long since escaped from the chrysalis state of coffee-shop, and now, resplendent with plate-glass and mahogany bar, cooks joints, and draws the celebrated Crm Grw Llangollen ale, and is filled with a perpetual stream of clattering junior clerks from the adjacent war

46、ehouses. The Crown-according to its proprietor, in whose family its lease has been vested since its establishment-dont do nothin of this sort, and dont want to. It still regards chops and steaks as the most delicious of human food, and tea and coffee as the only beverages by which their consumption

47、should be accompanied. Across its window still stretches an illuminated blind representing an Italian gentleman putting off in a boat with apparently nothing more serviceable for navigation purposes than a blue banjo; and it still makes a gorgeous display of two large coffee-cups and saucers, with o

48、ne egg in a blue egg-cup between them. Its interior is still cut up into brown boxes with hard narrow seats, on which you must either sit bolt upright, or fall off at once; its narrow old tables are scarred and notched and worm-eaten; and it holds yet by its sawdusted floor. About seven oclock in th

49、e evening of the same day on which Inspector Stellfox had consulted Mr. Moss, the green-baize door of the Crown was gently swung open, and a man slinking in dived into the nearest box then vacant. He was a young fellow of not more than three-and-twenty, with well-cut regular features, and who would have been han