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If you have read certain other stories of mine you may remember that, upon a memorable occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest made a trip to New York and while there had dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, a promoter of gas and other hot-air propositions; and that during the course of his stay in the metropolis he made the acquaintance of one Malley, a Sun reporter.
"Well, we'll see what Doc Stone has to say about it," Henley retorted. "He's authority, an' you hain't." Pitman had no reply ready. They heard the gate open and close, and then on the still air came the gentle voice of Dixie speaking from the attic window. "Come right in, Doctor, and up the ladder. Be careful and don't stumble. I'll hold the candle for you." Pitman sullenly turned away.
"This is where I entered the case," said Mr. Holcombe, "I rowed into the lower hall this morning, to feed the dog, Peter, who was whining on the staircase. Mrs. Pitman was coming down, pale and agitated over the fact that the dog, shortly before, had found floating in the parlor down-stairs a slipper belonging to Mrs. Ladley, and, later, a knife with a broken blade.
"They'll be a cocking they noses oop aboove their feythers, joost acause they know moore reading and writing, but what good ul it do they I wonder?" an elderly pitman asked a circle of workmen at the "Chequers;" and a general affirmatory grunt betokened assent with the spirit of his words.
Altogether it was a very interesting book, as books lacking authority often are. In the notes that follow reference is often made to Lamb's Key. This is a paper explaining certain initials and blanks in Elia, which Lamb drew up for R.B. Pitman, a fellow clerk at the East India House.
First she ran to the house of James Shepherd. The pitman, who was a sturdy man, had been asleep for the last three hours. She knocked at the door, unlocked it, and went in. "Jim," she called in a loud voice. "Aye, what be't?" said a sleepy voice upstairs; "be't thou, Harry and Sally?"
"If you come to that, Pitman," said Michael, "the advertiser may be Queen Victoria, fired with the desire to make a duke of you. I put it to yourself if that's probable; and yet it's not against the laws of nature. But we sit here to consider probabilities; and with your genteel permission, I eliminate her Majesty and Uncle Tim on the threshold.
Talking of which, suppose you wet your whistle? the interview is likely to be trying. 'I think I'll wait till afterwards, returned Pitman; 'on the whole, I think I'll wait till the thing's over. I don't know if it strikes you as it does me; but the place seems deserted and silent, Mr Finsbury, and filled with very singular echoes.
'They are an essential part of my disguise. 'I am going to wear them myself, replied Michael; and he added, with some show of truth, 'There would be a devil of a lot of suspicion aroused if we both wore spectacles. 'O, well, said the assenting Pitman, 'I rather counted on them; but of course, if you insist. And at any rate, here is the cart at the door.
An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would not have accepted in silence the tragic contents of the water-butt; a man, who was not already up to the hilts in gore, would have lacked the means of secretly disposing them. This process of reasoning left a horrid image of the monster, Pitman.
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