Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/297

Rh round on hearing this remark, and smiled—smiled very very faintly; but he certainly did smile. The Smasher's blood, which was something like that of Lancaster, and distinguished for its tendency to mount, was up in a moment.

"I hope you find my conversation amusin', old gent," he said, with considerable asperity; "I came down here on purpose to put you in spirits, on account of bein' grieved to see you always a-lookin' as if you'd just come home from your own funeral, and the undertaker was a-dunnin' you for the burial-fees."

Gus trod heavily on his companion's foot as a friendly hint to him not to get up a demonstration; and addressing the gentleman, who appeared in no hurry to resent the Smasher's contemptuous animadversions, asked him when he thought the boat would start.

"Not for five or ten minutes, I dare say," he answered. "Look there; is that a coffin they're bringing this way? I'm rather short-sighted; be good enough to tell me if it is a coffin?"

The Smasher, who had the glance of an eagle, replied that it decidedly was a coffin; adding, with a growl, that he knowed somebody as might be in it, and no harm done to society.

The elderly gentleman took not the slightest notice of this gratuitous piece of information on the part of the left-handed gladiator; but suddenly busied himself with his fingers in the neighbourhood of his limp white cravat.

"Why, I'm blest," cried the Smasher, "if the old baby ain't at Peters's game, a-talkin' to nobody upon his fingers!"

Nay, most distinguished professor of the noble art of self-defence, is not that assertion a little premature? Talking on his fingers, certainly—looking at nobody, certainly; but for all that, talking to somebody, and to a somebody who is looking at him; for, from the other side of the little crowd, the Irish labourer fixes his eyes intently on every movement of the grave elderly gentleman's fingers, as they run through four or five rapid words; and Gus Darley, perceiving this look, starts in amazement, for the eyes of the Irish labourer are the eyes of Mr. Peters of the detective police.

But neither the Smasher nor Gus is to notice Mr. Peters unless Mr. Peters notices them. It is so expressed in the note, which Mr. Darley has at that very moment in his waistcoat pocket. So Gus gives his companion a nudge, and directs his attention to the smock-frock and the slouched hat in which the detective has hidden himself, with a hurried injunction to him to keep quiet. We are human at the best; ay, even when we are celebrated for our genius in the muscular science, and our well-known blow of the left-handed postman's knock, or double auctioneer: and, if the sober truth must be told, the Smasher was sorry to recognize Mr. Peters in that borrowed garb. He