"I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to say to you. I don't like your associates and don't want you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn.""I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let me say a private word to you?"Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into one of the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste." In the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the light and to have the other with his face towards it.
"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally--and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account. He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the Royal Artillery--""My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses, guns, and ammunition.""'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other day.""Have you got it here?"
"I have got it here, sir."
"Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re-open it. Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you choose. In case you choose to leave it here, Ican do this for you--I can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you decided?"The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long breath, "I must do it, sir."So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's elbow. "'Tis ouly a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from him."Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression, and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr.
Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.
Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go.
Show these men out, there!" Being shown out, they repair to Mr.
Bagnet's residence to dine.
