Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/172

168 and I love the world with its pomps, vanities, and wickedness. While you, therefore, oh Corydon—don't be afraid, I'm not going to quote Virgil—are studying Nature's book, I am deep in the musty leaves of Themis' volume, but I dare say that the great mother teaches you much better things than her artificial daughter does me. However, you remember that pithy proverb, 'When one is in Rome, one must not speak ill of the Pope,' so, being in the legal profession, I must respect its muse. I suppose when you saw that this letter came from a law office, you wondered what the deuce a lawyer was writing to you for, and my handwriting, no doubt, suggested a writ—pshaw! I am wrong there, you are past the age of writs—not that I hint that you are old, by no means—you are just at that appreciative age when a man enjoys life most, when the fire of youth is tempered by experience of age, and one knows how to enjoy to the utmost the good things of this world, videlicet—love, wine, and friendship. I am afraid I am growing poetical, which is a bad thing for a lawyer, for the flower of poetry cannot flourish in the arid wastes of the law. On reading what I have written, I find I have been as discursive as Præd's Vicar, and as this letter is supposed to be a business one, I must deny myself the luxury of following out a train of idle ideas, and write sense. I suppose you still hold the secret which Rosanna Moore entrusted you with—ah! you see I know her name, and why?—simply because, with the natural curiosity of the human race, I have been trying to find out who murdered Oliver Whyte, and as the Argus very cleverly pointed out Rosanna Moore as likely to be at the bottom of the whole affair, I have been learning her past history. The secret of Whyte's murder, and the reason for it, is knwonknown [sic] to you, but you refuse even in the interests of justice, to reveal it—why, I don't know; but we all have our little faults, and from an amiable, though mistaken sense of—shall I say duty?—you refuse to deliver up the man whose cowardly crime so nearly cost you your life.

"After your departure fremfrom [sic] Melbourne every one said 'The hansom cab tragedy is at an end, and the murderer will never be discovered.' I ventured to disagree with the wiseacres who made such a remark, and asked myself 'who was this woman who died at Mother Guttersnipe's?'