Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/18

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"Well," said Mr. Gorby, addressing his reflection in the looking-glass, "I've been finding out things these last twenty years, but this is a puzzler, and no mistake."

Mr. Gorby was shaving, and as was his usual custom conversed with his reflection. Being a detective, and of an extremely reticent disposition, he never talked outside about his business, or made a confidant of anyone. When he did want to unbosom himself, he retired to his bedroom and talked to his reflection in the mirror. This mode of proceeding was a safe one, and, moreover, relieved his overburdened mind of anything he wished to speak about, yet wanted to keep secret. The barber of Midas, when he found out what was under the royal crown of his master, fretted and chafed over his secret, until he stole one morning to the reeds by the river, and whispered "Midas has ass's ears." In the like manner Mr. Gorby felt a necessity at times to let out his secret thoughts in talk, and as he did not care about chattering to the air, he made his mirror the confidant of his ideas, and liked to see his own jolly red face nodding gravely at him out of the shining glass, like a mandarin. If that cheap little looking-glass which Mr. Gorby stared at every morning could only have spoken, what revelations there would have been of Melbourne secrets and Melbourne morals. But then, luckily for some people, we do not live in fairy-land, and however sympathetic Mr. Gorby found his mirror, it revealed nothing. This morning the detective was unusually animated in his talk with the looking-glass, and at times a puzzled expression passed over his face. The hansom cab murder had been put into his hands in order to clear up the mystery connected therewith, and he was trying to think of how to make a beginning.

"Hang it," he said, thoughtfully, stropping his razor, "a thing with an end must have a start, and if I don't get the start how am I to get the end?"

As the mirror did not answer this question, Mr. Gorby