Detective and mystery stories; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Missing persons -- Fiction
The gentleman was absolutely motionless and silent. And Mr. Larkin,
though his mind was pretty universally of the inquisitive order, began in
this particular case to feel a special curiosity. It was partly the
monotony and their occupying the carriage all to themselves--as the two
uncommunicative seamen did the Eddystone Lighthouse--but there was,
beside, an indistinct feeling, that, in spite of all these wrappers and
swathings, he knew the outlines of that figure; and yet the likeness must
have been of the rudest possible sort.
He could not say that he recognised anything distinctly--only he fancied
that some one he knew was sitting there, unrevealed, inside that mass of
clothing. And he felt, moreover, as if he ought to be able to guess who
he was.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
THE COMPANION DISCLOSES HIMSELF.
But this sort of musing and wonderment leads to nothing; and Mr. Jos.
Larkin being an active-minded man, and practical withal, in a little
while shook it off, and from his breast-pocket took a tiny treasure of a
pocket-book, in which were some bank-notes, precious memoranda in pencil,
and half-a-dozen notes and letters, bearing upon cases and negotiations
on which, at this juncture, he was working.
Into these he got, and now and then brought out a letter bearing on some
point of speculation, and read it through, and then closed his eyes for
three minutes at a time, and thought. But he had not his tin boxes there;
and, with a man of his stamp, speculation, which goes upon guess as to
dates and quantities, which are all ascertainable by reference to black
and white, soon loses its interest. And the evidence in his pocket being
pretty soon exhausted, he glanced again at his companion over the way.
He had not moved all this while. He had a high stand-up collar to the
cape he wore, which covered his cheeks and nose and outside was loosely
swathed a large, cream-coloured, cashmere handkerchief. The battered felt
hat covered his forehead and eyebrows, and left, in fact, but a narrow
streak of separation between.
Through this, however, for the first time, Jos. Larkin now saw the
glitter of a pair of eyes gazing at him, he fancied. At all events there
was the glitter, and the gentleman was awake.
Jos. returned the gentleman's gaze. It was his lofty aristocratic stare;
and he expected to see the glittering lights that peeped through the dark
chink between brim and collar shut up under its rebuke. But nothing of
the kind took place, and the ocular exercises of the attorney were
totally ineffectual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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