The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we are
being found out every day. You remember that old story of the Abbe
Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one night how the first
confession he ever received was--from a murderer, let us say.
Presently enters to supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine.
"Palsambleu, abbe!" says the brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of
snuff, "are you here? Gentlemen and ladies! I was the abbe's
first penitent, and I made him a confession, which I promise you
astonished him."
To be sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance.
Only the other day I was writing in these Roundabout Papers about a
certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me
to my friends, who of course told me. Shortly after that paper was
published another friend--Sacks let us call him--scowls fiercely at
me as I am sitting in perfect good humor at the club, and passes on
without speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is about him
that I was writing: whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never
had him once in my mind, and was pointing my moral from quite
another man. But don't you see, by this wrath of the guilty-
conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too? He has owned
himself guilty, never having been accused. He has winced when
nobody thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap out, and
madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes out to put his
head into it! Never mind, Sacks, you are found out; but I bear you
no malice, my man.
And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be
painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity.
Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce mustache, loud
talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless
a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women;
brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two
with it: brag of the images which I break at the shooting gallery,
and pass among my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of
neither man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose some brisk little chap
steps up and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the
heads of my friends looking out of all the club windows. My
reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by
whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found
out. And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid
of me, and were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a
lily liver, and expected that I should be found out some day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account