Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/189

Rh French and English, on the inhabitants of a world not capable of appreciating him.

It was a long time before anything like quiet could be restored; but when it was, Richard addressed the meeting.

"Gentlemen, before the unfortunate circumstance which has so long separated us, you knew me, I believe, well, and I am proud to think you esteemed and trusted me."

Did they? Oh, rather. They jingled all the glasses, and broke three in the enthusiastic protestation of an affirmative.

"I need not allude to the unhappy accusation of which I have been the victim. You are, I understand, acquainted with the full particulars of my miserable story, and you render me happy by thinking me to be innocent."

By thinking him to be innocent? By knowing him to be innocent! They are so indignant at the bare thought of anybody believing otherwise, that somebody in the doorway, the Smasher himself, growls out something about a—forcible adjective—noise, and the police.

"Gentlemen, I have this day regained my liberty; thanks to the exertions of a person to whom I am also indebted for my life, and thanks also to the assistance of my old friend Gus Darley."

Everybody here insisted on shaking hands over again with Gus, which was rather a hindrance to the speaker's progress; but at last Richard went on,—

"Now, gentlemen, relying on your friendship" (hear, hear! and another glass broken), "I am about to appeal to you to assist me in the future object of my life. That object will be to discover the real murderer of my uncle, Montague Harding. In what manner, when, or where you may be able to assist me in this, I cannot at present say, but you are all, gentlemen, men of talent." (More glasses broken, and a good deal of beer spilt into everybody's boots.) "You are all men of varied experience, of inexhaustible knowledge of the world, and of the life of London. Strange things happen every day of our lives. Who shall say that some one amongst you may not fall, by some strange accident, or let me say rather by the handiwork of Providence, across a clue to this at present entirely unravelled mystery? Promise me, therefore, gentlemen, to give me the benefit of your experience; and whenever that experience throws you into the haunts of bad men, remember that the man I seek may, by some remote chance, be amongst them; and that to find him is the one object of my life. I cannot give you the faintest index to what he may be, or who he may be. He may be dead, and beyond the reach of justice—but he may live! and if he does, Heaven grant that the man who has suffered the stigma of his guilt may track him to his doom. Gentlemen, tell me that your hearts go with me."