第89章

Mr.Gale happened to be at his door, and as we exchanged salutations, "Mr.Pinto," I said, "will you like to see a real curiosity in this curiosity shop? Step into Mr.Gale's little back room."In that little back parlor there are Chinese gongs; there are old Saxe and Sevres plates; there is Furstenberg, Carl Theodor, Worcester, Amstel, Nankin and other jimcrockery.And in the corner what do you think there is? There is an actual GUILLOTINE.If you doubt me, go and see--Gale, High Holborn, No.47.It is a slim instrument, much slighter than those which they make now;--some nine feet high, narrow, a pretty piece of upholstery enough.There is the hook over which the rope used to play which unloosened the dreadful ax above; and look! dropped into the orifice where the head used to go--there is THE AX itself, all rusty, with A GREATNOTCH IN THE BLADE.

As Pinto looked at it--Mr.Gale was not in the room, I recollect;happening to have been just called out by a customer who offered him three pound fourteen and sixpence for a blue Shepherd in pate tendre,--Mr.Pinto gave a little start, and seemed crispe for a moment.Then he looked steadily toward one of those great porcelain stools which you see in gardens--and--it seemed to me--Itell you I won't take my affidavit--I may have been maddened by the six glasses I took of that pink elixir--I may have been sleep-walking: perhaps am as I write now--I may have been under the influence of that astounding MEDIUM into whose hands I had fallen--but I vow I heard Pinto say, with rather a ghastly grin at the porcelain stool,"Nay, nefer shague your gory locks at me, Dou canst not say I did it."(He pronounced it, by the way, I DIT it, by which I KNOW that Pinto was a German.)I heard Pinto say those very words, and sitting on the porcelain stool I saw, dimly at first, then with an awful distinctness--a ghost--an EIDOLON--a form--A HEADLESS MAN seated with his head in his lap, which wore an expression of piteous surprise.

At this minute, Mr.Gale entered from the front shop to show a customer some Delft plates; and he did not see--but WE DID--the figure rise up from the porcelain stool, shake its head, which it held in its hand, and which kept its eyes fixed sadly on us, and disappear behind the guillotine.

"Come to the 'Gray's-Inn Coffee-House,'" Pinto said, "and I will tell you how the notch came to the ax." And we walked down Holborn at about thirty-seven minutes past six o'clock.

If there is anything in the above statement which astonishes the reader, I promise him that in the next chapter of this little story he will be astonished still more.

II

"You will excuse me," I said to my companion, "for remarking that when you addressed the individual sitting on the porcelain stool, with his head in his lap, your ordinarily benevolent features"--(this I confess was a bouncer, for between ourselves a more sinister and ill-looking rascal than Mons.P.I have seldom set eyes on)--"your ordinarily handsome face wore an expression that was by no means pleasing.You grinned at the individual just as you did at me when you went up to the cei--, pardon me, as ITHOUGHT you did, when I fell down in a fit in your chambers"; and Iqualified my words in a great flutter and tremble; I did not care to offend the man--I did not DARE to offend the man.I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab, and flying; of taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse; of speaking to a policeman, but not one would come.I was this man's slave.I followed him like his dog.I COULD not get away from him.So, you see, I went on meanly conversing with him, and affecting a simpering confidence.I remember, when I was a little boy at school, going up fawning and smiling in this way to some great hulking bully of a sixth-form boy.So I said in a word, "Your ordinarily handsome face wore a disagreeable expression," &c.

"It is ordinarily VERY handsome," said he, with such a leer at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, "Oh, crickey, here's a precious guy!" and a child, in its nurse's arms, screamed itself into convulsions."Oh, oui, che suis tres-choli garcon, bien peau, cerdainement," continued Mr.Pinto; "but you were right.That--that person was not very well pleased when he saw me.There was no love lost between us, as you say: and the world never knew a more worthless miscreant.I hate him, voyez-vous? I hated him alife; Ihate him dead.I hate him man; I hate him ghost: and he know it, and tremble before me.If I see him twenty tausend years hence--and why not?--I shall hate him still.You remarked how he was dressed?""In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder.He must have worn a pigtail--only--""Only it was CUT OFF! Ha, ha, ha!" Mr.Pinto cried, yelling a laugh, which I observed made the policeman stare very much."Yes.

1

And here his natural eye was bedewed with tears."But here we are at the 'Gray's-Inn CoffeeHouse.' James, what is the joint?"That very respectful and efficient waiter brought in the bill of fare, and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork, and pease pudding, which my acquaintance said would do as well as anything else; though I remarked he only trifled with the pease pudding, and left all the pork on the plate.In fact, he scarcely ate anything.