Lord Arthur Savile's Crime; The Portrait of Mr. W.H., and Other StoriesWilde, Oscar
General
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime; The Portrait of Mr. W.H., and Other Stories
Wilde, Oscar
Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
He accordingly looked again over the list of his friends and relatives,
and, after careful consideration, determined to blow up his uncle, the
Dean of Chichester. The Dean, who was a man of great culture and
learning, was extremely fond of clocks, and had a wonderful collection of
timepieces, ranging from the fifteenth century to the present day, and it
seemed to Lord Arthur that this hobby of the good Dean’s offered him an
excellent opportunity for carrying out his scheme. Where to procure an
explosive machine was, of course, quite another matter. The London
Directory gave him no information on the point, and he felt that there
was very little use in going to Scotland Yard about it, as they never
seemed to know anything about the movements of the dynamite faction till
after an explosion had taken place, and not much even then.
Suddenly he thought of his friend Rouvaloff, a young Russian of very
revolutionary tendencies, whom he had met at Lady Windermere’s in the
winter. Count Rouvaloff was supposed to be writing a life of Peter the
Great, and to have come over to England for the purpose of studying the
documents relating to that Tsar’s residence in this country as a ship
carpenter; but it was generally suspected that he was a Nihilist agent,
and there was no doubt that the Russian Embassy did not look with any
favour upon his presence in London. Lord Arthur felt that he was just
the man for his purpose, and drove down one morning to his lodgings in
Bloomsbury, to ask his advice and assistance.
‘So you are taking up politics seriously?’ said Count Rouvaloff, when
Lord Arthur had told him the object of his mission; but Lord Arthur, who
hated swagger of any kind, felt bound to admit to him that he had not the
slightest interest in social questions, and simply wanted the explosive
machine for a purely family matter, in which no one was concerned but
himself.
Count Rouvaloff looked at him for some moments in amazement, and then
seeing that he was quite serious, wrote an address on a piece of paper,
initialled it, and handed it to him across the table.
‘Scotland Yard would give a good deal to know this address, my dear
fellow.’
‘They shan’t have it,’ cried Lord Arthur, laughing; and after shaking the
young Russian warmly by the hand he ran downstairs, examined the paper,
and told the coachman to drive to Soho Square.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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