An invaluable servant, Mr. Armadale; they're all invaluable servants in this house. We may not be fashionable here, sir, but by the Lord Harry we are snug! A cab? you would like a cab? Don't stir! I've rung the bell twice--that means, Cab wanted in a hurry. Might I ask, Mr. Armadale, which way your business takes you? Toward Bayswater? Would you mind dropping me in the park? It's a habit of mine when I'm in London to air myself among the aristocracy. Yours truly, sir, has an eye for a fine woman and a fine horse; and when he's in Hyde Park he's quite in his native element." Thus the all-accomplished Pedgift ran on; and by these little arts did he recommend himself to the good opinion of his client.
When the dinner hour united the traveling companions again in their sitting-room at the hotel, a far less acute observer than young Pedgift must have noticed the marked change that appeared in Allan's manner. He looked vexed and puzzled, and sat drumming with his fingers on the dining-table without uttering a word.
"I'm afraid something has happened to annoy you, sir, since we parted company in the Park?" said Pedgift Junior. "Excuse the question; I only ask it in case I can be of any use."
"Something that I never expected has happened," returned Allan; "I don't know what to make of it. I should like to have your opinion," he added, after a little hesitation; "that is to say, if you will excuse my not entering into any particulars?"
"Certainly!" assented young Pedgift. "Sketch it in outline, sir. The merest hint will do; I wasn't born yesterday." ("Oh, these women!" thought the youthful philosopher, in parenthesis.)
"Well," began Allan, "you know what I said when we got to this hotel; I said I had a place to go to in Bayswater" (Pedgift mentally checked off the first point: Case in the suburbs, Bayswater); "and a person--that is to say--no--as I said before, a person to inquire after." (Pedgift checked off the next point: Person in the case. She-person, or he-person? She-person, unquestionably!) "Well, I went to the house, and when I asked for her--I mean the person--she--that is to say, the person--oh, confound it!" cried Allan, "I shall drive myself mad, and you, too, if I try to tell my story in this roundabout way. Here it is in two words. I went to No. 18 Kingsdown Crescent, to see a lady named Mandeville; and, when I asked for her, the servant said Mrs. Mandeville had gone away, without telling anybody where, and without even leaving an address at which letters could be sent to her. There! it's out at last. And what do you think of it now?"
"Tell me first, sir," said the wary Pedgift, "what inquiries you made when you found this lady had vanished?"
"Inquiries!" repeated Allan. "I was utterly staggered; I didn't say anything. What inquiries ought I to have made?"
Pedgift Junior cleared his throat, and crossed his legs in a strictly professional manner.
"I have no wish, Mr. Armadale," he began, "to inquire into your business with Mrs. Mandeville--"
"No," interposed Allan, bluntly; "I hope you won't inquire into that. My business with Mrs. Mandeville must remain a secret."
"But," pursued Pedgift, laying down the law with the forefinger of one hand on the outstretched palm of the other, "I may, perhaps, be allowed to ask generally whether your business with Mrs. Mandeville is of a nature to interest you in tracing her from Kingsdown Crescent to her present residence?"
"Certainly!" said Allan. "I have a very particular reason for wishing to see her."
"In that case, sir," returned Pedgift Junior, "there were two obvious questions which you ought to have asked, to begin with--namely, on what date Mrs. Mandeville left, and how she left. Having discovered this, you should have ascertained next under what domestic circumstances she went away--whether there was a misunderstanding with anybody; say a difficulty about money matters. Also, whether she went away alone, or with somebody else. Also, whether the house was her own, or whether she only lodged in it. Also, in the latter event--"
"Stop! stop! you're making my head swim," cried Allan. "I don't understand all these ins and outs. I'm not used to this sort of thing."
"I've been used to it myself from my childhood upward, sir," remarked Pedgift. "And if I can be of any assistance, say the word."
"You're very kind," returned Allan. "If you could only help me to find Mrs. Mandeville; and if you wouldn't mind leaving the thing afterward entirely in my hands--?"
"I'll leave it in your hands, sir, with all the pleasure in life," said Pedgift Junior. ("And I'll lay five to one," he added, mentally, "when the time comes, you'll leave it in mine!") "We'll go to Bayswater together, Mr. Armadale, tomorrow morning. In the meantime. here's the soup. The case now before the court is, Pleasure versus Business. I don't know what you say, sir; I say, without a moment's hesitation, Verdict for the plaintiff. Let us gather our rosebuds while we may. Excuse my high spirits, Mr. Armadale. Though buried in the country, I was made for a London life; the very air of the metropolis intoxicates me." With that avowal the irresistible Pedgift placed a chair for his patron, and issued his orders cheerfully to his viceroy, the head-waiter. "Iced punch, William, after the soup. I answer for the punch, Mr. Armadale; it's made after a recipe of my great-uncle's. He kept a tavern, and founded the fortunes of the family. I don't mind telling you the Pedgifts have had a publican among them; there's no false pride about me. 'Worth makes the man (as Pope says) and want of it the fellow; the rest is all but leather and prunella.' I cultivate poetry as well as music, sir, in my leisure hours; in fact, I'm more or less on familiar terms with the whole of the nine Muses. Aha! here's the punch! The memory of my great-uncle, the publican, Mr. Armadale--drunk in solemn silence!"
Allan tried hard to emulate his companion's gayety and good humor, but with very indifferent success. His visit to Kingsdown Crescent recurred ominously again and again to his memory all through the dinner, and all through the public amusements to which he and his legal adviser repaired at a later hour of the evening. When Pedgift Junior put out his candle that night, he shook his wary head, and regretfully apostrophized "the women" for the second time.
By ten o'clock the next morning the indefatigable Pedgift was on the scene of action. To Allan's great relief, he proposed making the necessary inquiries at Kingsdown Crescent in his own person, while his patron waited near at hand, in the cab which had brought them from the hotel. After a delay of little more than five minutes, he reappeared, in full possession of all attainable particulars. His first proceeding was to request Allan to step out of the cab, and to pay the driver. Next, he politely offered his arm, and led the way round the corner of the crescent, across a square, and into a by-street, which was rendered exceptionally lively by the presence of the local cab-stand. Here he stopped, and asked jocosely whether Mr. Armadale saw his way now, or whether it would be necessary to test his patience by making an explanation.
"See my way?" repeated Allan, in bewilderment. "I see nothing but a cab-stand."
Pedgift Junior smiled compassionately, and entered on his explanation. It was a lodging-house at Kingsdown Crescent, he begged to state to begin with. He had insisted on seeing the landlady. A very nice person, with all the remains of having been a fine girl about fifty years ago; quite in Pedgift's style--if he had only been alive at the beginning of the present century--quite in Pedgift's style. But perhaps Mr. Armadale would prefer hearing about Mrs. Mandeville? Unfortunately, there was nothing to tell. There had been no quarreling, and not a farthing left unpaid: the lodger had gone, and there wasn't an explanatory circumstance to lay hold of anywhere. It was either Mrs. Mandeville's way to vanish, or there was something under the rose, quite undiscoverable so far. Pedgift had got the date on which she left, and the time of day at which she left, and the means by which she left. The means might help to trace her. She had gone away in a cab which the servant had fetched from the nearest stand. The stand was now before their eyes; and the waterman was the first person to apply to--going to the waterman for information being clearly (if Mr. Armadale would excuse the joke) going to the fountain-head. Treating the subject in this airy manner, and telling Allan that he would be back in a moment, Pedgift Junior sauntered down the street, and beckoned the waterman confidentially into the nearest public-house.
In a little while the two re-appeared, the waterman taking Pedgift in succession to the first, third, fourth, and sixth of the cabmen whose vehicles were on the stand. The longest conference was held with the sixth man; and it ended in the sudden approach of the sixth cab to the part of the street where Allan was waiting.
"Get in, sir," said Pedgift, opening the door; "I've found the man.