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- Author: Charles Dickens
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“I tell you,” said Jerry, “that you buried paving-stones and earth in that there coffin. Don’t go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two more knows it.”
“How do you know it?”
“What’s that to you? Ecod!” growled Mr. Cruncher, “it’s you I have got a old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen! I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.”
Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement at this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and explain himself.
“At another time, sir,” he returned, evasively, “the present time is ill-conwenient for explainin’. What I stand to, is, that he knows well wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was, in so much as a word of one syllable, and I’ll either catch hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea;” Mr. Cruncher dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer; “or I’ll out and announce him.”
“Humph! I see one thing,” said Carton. “I hold another card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again! A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic. A strong card—a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?”
“No!” returned the spy. “I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.”
“Never you trouble your head about this man,” retorted the contentious Mr. Cruncher; “you’ll have trouble enough with giving your attention to that gentleman. And look here! Once more!”—Mr. Cruncher could not be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his liberality—“I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.”
The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said, with more decision, “It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and can’t overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal; what is it? Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short, I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here. Remember! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my way through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what do you want with me?”
“Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?”
“I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible,” said the spy, firmly.
“Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?”
“I am sometimes.”
“You can be when you choose?”
“I can pass in and out when I choose.”
Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly out upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he said, rising:
“So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me. Come into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone.”
The Game Made
While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman’s manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry’s eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.
“Jerry,” said Mr. Lorry. “Come here.”
Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance of him.
“What have you been, besides a messenger?”
After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron, Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, “Agicultooral character.”
“My mind misgives me much,” said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger at him, “that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson’s as a blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description. If you have, don’t expect me to befriend you when you get back to England. If you have, don’t expect me to keep your secret. Tellson’s shall not be imposed upon.”
“I hope, sir,” pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, “that a gentleman like yourself wot I’ve had the honour of odd jobbing till I’m grey at it, would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so—I don’t say it is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if it wos, it wouldn’t, even then, be all o’ one side. There’d be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking up their guineas where a honest tradesman don’t pick up his fardens—fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens—half fardens! no, nor yet his quarter—a banking away like smoke at Tellson’s, and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly, a going in and going out to their own carriages—ah! equally like smoke, if not more so. Well, that ’ud be imposing, too, on Tellson’s. For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. And here’s Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a floppin’ again the business to that degree as is ruinating—stark ruinating! Whereas them medical doctors’ wives don’t flop—catch ’em at it! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients, and how can you rightly have one without t’other? Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn’t get much by it, even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him, Mr. Lorry. He’d never have no good of it; he’d want all along to be out of the line, if he, could see his way out, being once in—even if it wos so.”
“Ugh!” cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless, “I am shocked at the sight of you.”
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