The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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СКАЧАТЬ conglomerated essence of toothache on the cerebral nerves took him off in fourteen days, three weeks, and one month. We tried everything, from dandelions”—(her eyes wandered as if searching the grounds for information as to what they had tried)—from dandelions to chevaux-de-frise—”

      She stopped abruptly, staring Richard full in the face, as if she expected him to say something; but as he said nothing, she became suddenly interested in the contemplation of the green boots, looking first at one and then at the other, as if revolving in her mind the probability of their wanting mending.

      Presently she looked up, and said with great solemnity—

      “Do you know the muffin-man?”

      Richard shook his head.

      “He lives in Drury Lane,” she added, looking at him rather sternly, as much as to say, “Come, no nonsense! you know him well enough!”

      “No,” said Richard, “I don’t remember having met him.”

      “There are seventy-nine of us who know the muffin-man in this establishment, sir—seventy-nine; and do you dare to stand there and tell me that you——”

      “I assure you, madam, I have not the honour of his acquaintance.”

      “Not know the muffin-man!—you don’t know the muffin-man! Why, you contemptible stuck-up jackanapes——”

      What the lady might have gone on to say, it would be difficult to guess. She was not celebrated for the refinement of her vocabulary when much provoked; but at this moment a great stout man, one of the keepers, came up, and cried out—

      “Holloa! what’s all this!”

      “He says he doesn’t know the muffin-man!” exclaimed the lady, her veil flying in the wind like a pennant, her arms akimbo, and the apple-green boots planted in a defiant manner on the gravel-walk.

      “Oh, we know him well enough,” said the man, with a wink at Richard, “and very slack he bakes his muffins.” Having uttered which piece of information connected with the gentleman in question, the keeper strolled off, giving just one steady look straight into the eyes of the lively damsel, which seemed to have an instantaneous and most soothing effect upon her nerves.

      As all the lunatics allowed to disport themselves for an hour in the gardens of the establishment were considered to be, upon the whole, pretty safe, the keepers were not in the habit of taking much notice of them. Those officials would congregate in little groups here and there, talking among themselves, and apparently utterly regardless of the unhappy beings over whom it was their duty to watch. But let Queen Victoria or the Emperor Nero, Lady Jane Grey or Lord John Russell, suffer themselves to be led away by their respective hobbies, or to ride those animals at too outrageous and dangerous a pace, and a strong hand would be laid upon the rider’s shoulder, accompanied by a recommendation to “go indoors,” which was very seldom disregarded.

      As Richard was this afternoon permitted to mix with his fellow-prisoners for the first time, the boy from Slopperton was ordered to keep an eye upon him; and a very sharp eye the boy kept, never for one moment allowing a look, word, or action of the prisoner to escape him.

      The keepers this afternoon were assembled near the portico, before which the gardens extended to the high outer wall. The ground between the portico and the wall was a little less than a quarter of a mile in length, and at the bottom was the grand entrance and the porter’s lodge. The gardens surrounded the house on three sides, and on the left side the wall ran parallel with the river Sloshy. This river was now so much swollen by the late heavy rains that the waters washed the wall to the height of four feet, entirely covering the towing-path, which lay ordinarily between the wall and the waterside.

      Now Richard and the Emperor of the Waterworks, accompanied by the gushing charmer in the green boots, being all three engaged in friendly though rather erratic conversation, happened to stroll in the direction of the grounds on this side, and consequently out of sight of the keepers.

      The boy from Slopperton was, however, close upon their heels. This young gentleman had his hands in his pockets, and was loitering and lounging along with an air which seemed to say, that neither man nor woman gave him any more delight than they had afforded the Danish prince of used-up memory. Perhaps it was in utter weariness of life that he was, as if unconsciously, employed in whistling the melody of a song, supposed to relate to a passage in the life of a young lady of the name of Gray, christian name Alice, whose heart it was another’s, and consequently, by pure logic, never could belong to the singer.

      Now there may be something infectious in this melody; for no sooner had the boy from Slopperton whistled the first few bars, than some person in the distance outside the walls of the asylum gardens took up the air and finished it. A trifling circumstance this in itself; but it appeared to afford the boy considerable gratification; and he presently came suddenly upon Richard in the middle of a very interesting conversation, and whispered in his ear, or rather at his elbow, “All right, general!” Now as Richard, the Emperor of the Waterworks, and the only daughter of the Pope all talked at once, and all talked of entirely different subjects, their conversation might, perhaps, have been just a little distracting to a short-hand reporter; but as a conversation, it was really charming.

      Richard—still musing on the wild idea which was known in the asylum to have possessed his disordered brain ever since the day of his trial—was giving his companions an account of his escape from Elba.

      “I was determined,” he said, taking the Emperor of the Waterworks by the button, “I was determined to make one desperate effort to return to my friends in France——”

      “Very creditable, to be sure,” said the damsel of the green boots; “your sentiments did you honour.”

      “But to escape from the island was an enterprise of considerable difficulty,” continued Richard.

      “Of course,” said the damsel, “considering the price of flour. Flour rose a halfpenny in the bushel in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, which, of course, reduced the size of muffins——”

      “And had a depressing effect upon the water-rates,” interrupted the gentleman.

      “Now,” continued Richard, “the island of Elba was surrounded by a high wall——”

      “A very convenient arrangement; of course facilitating the process of cutting off the water from the inhabitants,” muttered the Emperor of the German Ocean.

      The boy Slosh again expressed his feelings with reference to Alice Gray, and some one on the other side of the wall coincided with him.

      “And,” said Richard, “on the top of this wall was a chevaux-defrise.”

      “Dear me,” exclaimed the Emperor, “quite a what-you-may-call-it. I mean an extraordinary coincidence; we too have a chevaux-de-thing-a-me, for the purpose, I believe, of keeping out the cats. Cats are unpleasant; especially,” he added, thoughtfully, “especially the Tom-sex—I mean the sterner sex.”

      “To surmount this wall was my great difficulty.”

      “Naturally, naturally,” said the damsel, “a great undertaking, considering the fall in muffins—a dangerous undertaking.”

      “There was a boat waiting to receive me on the other side,” said Richard, glancing at the wall, which was about a hundred yards distant from him.

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