Richard. "My friend Peters informs me that you know this man—this singular, this incomprehensible villain, whose supposed death is so extraordinary."
"He—either the man who died, or this man who is now occupying a high position in London—was for some years in my employ; but in spite of what our worthy friend the detective says, I am inclined to think that Jabez North, my tutor, did actually die, and that it was his body which I saw at the police-station."
"Not a bit of it, sir," said the detective on his rapid fingers, "not a bit of it! That death was a do—a do, out and out. It was too systematic to be anything else, and I was a fool not to see there was something black at the bottom of it at the time. People don't go and lay themselves out high and dry upon a heath, with clean soles to their shoes, on a stormy night, and the bottle in their hand—not took hold of, neither, but lying loose, you understand; put there—not clutched as a dying man clutches what his hand closes upon. I say this ain't how people make away with themselves when they can't stand life any longer. It was a do—a plant, such as very few but that man could be capable of; and that man's your tutor, and the death was meant to put a stop to all suspicion; and while you was a-sighin' and a-groanin' over that poor young innocent, Mr. Jabez North was a-cuttin' a fine figure, and a-captivatin' a furrin heiress, with your money, or your banker's money, as had to bear the loss of them forged cheques."
"But the likeness?" said Dr. Tappenden. "That dead man was the very image of Jabez North."
"Very likely, sir. There's mysterious goin's on, and some coincidences in this life, as well as in your story-books that's lent out at three half-pence a volume, keep 'em three days and return 'em clean."
"Well," continued the schoolmaster, "the moment I see this man I shall know whether he is indeed the person we want to find. If he should be the man who was my usher, I can prove a circumstance which will go a great way, Mr. Marwood, towards fixing your uncle's murder upon him."
"And that is———?" asked Richard, eagerly.
But there is no occasion for the reader to know what it is just yet; so we will leave the little party in the Friar Street surgery to talk this business over, which they do with such intense interest that the small hours catch them still talking of the same subject, and Mr. Percy Cordonner still snowed up in his corner, reading from the loose leaves the most fascinating olla podrida of literature, wherein the writings of Charles Dickens, George Sand, Harrison Ainsworth, and Alexandre Dumas are blended together in the most delicious and exciting confusion.
