第88章

Excuse me." Here he turned round as if he was addressing somebody, and began rapidly speaking a language unknown to me."It is Arabic," he said; "a bad patois, I own.I learned it in Barbary, when I was a prisoner among the Moors.In anno 1609, bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen.Ha! you doubt me: look at me well.At least Iam like--"

Perhaps some of my readers remember a paper of which the figure of a man carrying a barrel formed the initial letter, and which Icopied from an old spoon now in my possession.As I looked at Mr.

Pinto I do declare he looked so like the figure on that old piece of plate that I started and felt very uneasy."Ha!" said he, laughing through his false teeth (I declare they were false--Icould see utterly toothless gums working up and down behind the pink coral), "you see I wore a beard den; I am shafed now; perhaps you tink I am A SPOON.Ha, ha!" And as he laughed he gave a cough which I thought would have coughed his teeth out, his glass eye out, his wig off, his very head off; but he stopped this convulsion by stumping across the room and seizing a little bottle of bright pink medicine, which, being opened, spread a singular acrid aromatic odor through the apartment; and I thought I saw--but of this I cannot take an affirmation--a light green and violet flame flickering round the neck of the vial as he opened it.By the way, from the peculiar stumping noise which he made in crossing the bare-boarded apartment, I knew at once that my strange entertainer had a wooden leg.Over the dust which lay quite thick on the boards, you could see the mark of one foot very neat and pretty, and then a round O, which was naturally the impression made by the wooden stump.I own I had a queer thrill as I saw that mark, and felt a secret comfort that it was not CLOVEN.

In this desolate apartment in which Mr.Pinto had invited me to see him, there were three chairs, one bottomless, a little table on which you might put a breakfast tray, and not a single other article of furniture.In the next room, the door of which was open, I could see a magnificent gilt dressing case, with some splendid diamond and ruby shirt studs lying by it, and a chest of drawers, and a cupboard apparently full of clothes.

Remembering him in Baden-Baden in great magnificence I wondered at his present denuded state."You have a house elsewhere, Mr.

Pinto?" I said.

"Many," says he."I have apartments in many cities.I lock dem up, and do not carry mosh logish."I then remembered that his apartment at Baden, where I first met him, was bare, and had no bed in it.

"There is, then, a sleeping room beyond?""This is the sleeping room." (He pronounces it DIS.Can this, by the way, give any clew to the nationality of this singular man?)"If you sleep on these two old chairs you have a rickety couch; if on the floor, a dusty one.""Suppose I sleep up dere?" said this strange man, and he actually pointed up to the ceiling.I thought him mad or what he himself called "an ombog." "I know.You do not believe me; for why should I deceive you? I came but to propose a matter of business to you.

I told you I could give you the clew to the mystery of the Two Children in Black, whom you met at Baden, and you came to see me.

If I told you you would not believe me.What for try and convinz you? Ha hey?" And he shook his hand once, twice, thrice, at me, and glared at me out of his eye in a peculiar way.

Of what happened now I protest I cannot give an accurate account.

It seemed to me that there shot a flame from his eye into my brain, while behind his GLASS eye there was a green illumination as if a candle had been lit in it.It seemed to me that from his long fingers two quivering flames issued, sputtering, as it were, which penetrated me, and forced me back into one of the chairs--the broken one--out of which I had much difficulty in scrambling, when the strange glamour was ended.It seemed to me that, when I was so fixed, so transfixed in the broken chair, the man floated up to the ceiling, crossed his legs, folded his arms as if he was lying on a sofa, and grinned down at me.When I came to myself he was down from the ceiling, and, taking me out of the broken cane-bottomed chair, kindly enough--"Bah!" said he, "it is the smell of my medicine.It often gives the vertigo.I thought you would have had a little fit.Come into the open air." And we went down the steps, and into Shepherd's Inn, where the setting sun was just shining on the statue of Shepherd; the laundresses were traipsing about; the porters were leaning against the railings; and the clerks were playing at marbles, to my inexpressible consolation.

"You said you were going to dine at the 'Gray's-Inn Coffee-House,'"he said.I was.I often dine there.There is excellent wine at the "Gray's-Inn Coffee-House"; but I declare I NEVER SAID so.Iwas not astonished at his remark; no more astonished than if I was in a dream.Perhaps I WAS in a dream.Is life a dream? Are dreams facts? Is sleeping being really awake? I don't know.Itell you I am puzzled.I have read "The Woman in White," "The Strange Story"--not to mention that story "Stranger than Fiction"in the Cornhill Magazine--that story for which THREE credible witnesses are ready to vouch.I have had messages from the dead;and not only from the dead, but from people who never existed at all.I own I am in a state of much bewilderment: but, if you please, will proceed with my simple, my artless story.

Well, then.We passed from Shepherd's Inn into Holborn, and looked for a while at Woodgate's bric-a-brac shop, which I never can pass without delaying at the windows--indeed, if I were going to be hung, I would beg the cart to stop, and let me have one look more at that delightful omnium gatherum.And passing Woodgate's, we come to Gale's little shop, "No.47," which is also a favorite haunt of mine.