The Greatest Thrillers of Fergus Hume. Fergus Hume

Lizer, suddenly. “Come to see yer turn up your toes.”

      “I ain’t dead yet, ye whelp,” snarled the hag with sudden energy; “an’ if I gits up I’ll turn up yer toes, cuss ye.”

      Lizer gave a shrill laugh of disdain, and Kilsip stepped forward.

      “None of this,” he said, sharply, taking Lizer by one thin shoulder, and pushing her over to where the other girl was crouching; “stop there till I tell you to move.”

      Lizer tossed back her tangled black hair, and was about to make some impudent reply, when the other girl, who was older and wiser, put out her hand, and pulled her down beside her.

      Meanwhile, Calton was addressing himself to the old woman in the corner.

      “You wanted to see me?” he said gently, for, notwithstanding his repugnance to her, she was, after all, a woman, and dying.

      “Yes, cuss ye,” croaked Mother Guttersnipe, lying down, and pulling the greasy bedclothes up to her neck. “You ain’t a parson?” with sudden suspicion.

      “No, I am a lawyer.”

      “I ain’t a-goin’ to have the cussed parsons a-prowlin’ round ‘ere,” growled the old woman, viciously. “I ain’t a-goin’ to die yet, cuss ye; I’m goin’ to get well an’ strong, an’ ‘ave a good time of it.”

      “I’m afraid you won’t recover,” said Calton, gently. “You had better let me send for a doctor.”

      “No, I shan’t,” retorted the hag, aiming a blow at him with all her feeble strength. “I ain’t a-goin’ to have my inside spil’d with salts and senner. I don’t want neither parsons nor doctors, I don’t. I wouldn’t ‘ave a lawyer, only I’m a-thinkin’ of makin’ my will, I am.”

      “Mind I gits the watch,” yelled Lizer, from the corner. “If you gives it to Sal I’ll tear her eyes out.”

      “Silence!” said Kilsip, sharply, and, with a muttered curse, Lizer sat back in her corner.

      “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth, she are,” whined the old woman, when quiet was once more restored. “That young devil ‘ave fed at my ‘ome, an’ now she turns, cuss her.”

      “Well—well,” said Calton, rather impatiently, “what is it you wanted to see me about?”

      “Don’t be in such a ‘urry,” said the hag, with a scowl, “or I’m blamed if I tell you anything, s’elp me.”

      She was evidently growing very weak, so Calton turned to Kilsip and told him in a whisper to get a doctor. The detective scribbled a note on some paper, and, giving it to Lizer, ordered her to take it. At this, the other girl arose, and, putting her arm in that of the child’s, they left together.

      “Them two young ‘usseys gone?” said Mother Guttersnipe. “Right you are, for I don’t want what I’ve got to tell to git into the noospaper, I don’t.”

      “And what is it?” asked Calton, bending forward.

      The old woman took another drink of gin, and it seemed to put life into her, for she sat up in the bed, and commenced to talk rapidly, as though she were afraid of dying before her secret was told.

      “You’ve been ‘ere afore?” she said, pointing one skinny finger at Calton, “and you wanted to find out all about ‘er; but you didn’t. She wouldn’t let me tell, for she was always a proud jade, a-flouncin’ round while ‘er pore mother was a-starvin’.”

      “Her mother! Are you Rosanna Moore’s mother?” cried Calton, considerably astonished.

      “May I die if I ain’t,” croaked the hag. “‘Er pore father died of drink, cuss ‘im, an’ I’m a-follerin’ ‘im to the same place in the same way. You weren’t about town in the old days, or you’d a-bin after her, cuss ye.”

      “After Rosanna?”

      “The werry girl,” answered Mother Guttersnipe. “She were on the stage, she were, an’ my eye, what a swell she were, with all the coves a-dyin’ for ‘er, an’ she dancin’ over their black ‘earts, cuss ‘em; but she was allays good to me till ‘e came.”

      “Who came?”

      “‘E!” yelled the old woman, raising herself on her arm, her eyes sparkling with vindictive fury. “‘E, a-comin’ round with di’monds and gold, and a-ruinin’ my pore girl; an’ how ‘e’s ‘eld ‘is bloomin’ ‘ead up all these years as if he were a saint, cuss ‘im—cuss ‘im.”

      “Whom does she mean?” whispered Calton to Kilsip.

      “Mean!” screamed Mother Guttersnipe, whose sharp ears had caught the muttered question. “Why, Mark Frettlby!”

      “Good God!” Calton rose up in his astonishment, and even Kilsip’s inscrutable countenance displayed some surprise.

      “Aye, ‘e were a swell in them days,” pursued Mother Guttersnipe, “and ‘e comes a-philanderin’ round my gal, cuss ‘im, an’ ruins ‘er, and leaves ‘er an’ the child to starve, like a black-‘earted villain as ‘e were.”

      “The child! Her name?”

      “Bah,” retorted the hag, with scorn, “as if you didn’t know my gran’daughter Sal.”

      “Sal, Mark Frettlby’s child?”

      “Yes, an’ as pretty a girl as the other, tho’ she ‘appened to be born on the wrong side of the ‘edge. Oh, I’ve seen ‘er a-sweepin’ along in ‘er silks an’ satins as tho’ we were dirt—an’ Sal ‘er ‘alf sister—cuss ‘er.”

      Exhausted by the efforts she had made, the old woman sank back in her bed, while Calton sat dazed, thinking over the astounding revelation that had just been made. That Rosanna Moore should turn out to be Mark Frettlby’s mistress he hardly wondered at; after all, the millionaire was but a man, and in his young days had been no better and no worse than the rest of his friends. Rosanna Moore was pretty, and was evidently one of those women who—rakes at heart—prefer the untrammelled freedom of being a mistress, to the sedate bondage of a wife. In questions of morality, so many people live in glass houses, that there are few nowadays who can afford to throw stones. Calton did not think any the worse of Frettlby for his youthful follies. But what did surprise him was that Frettlby should be so heartless, as to leave his child to the tender mercies of an old hag like Mother Guttersnipe. It was so entirely different from what he knew of the man, that he was inclined to think that the old woman was playing him a trick.

      “Did Mr. Frettlby know Sal was his child?” he asked.

      “Not ‘e,” snarled Mother Guttersnipe, in an exultant tone. “‘E thought she was dead, ‘e did, arter Rosanner gave him the go-by.”

      “And why did you not tell him?”

      “‘Cause I wanted to break ‘is ‘eart, if ‘e ‘ad any,” said the old beldame, vindictively. “Sal was a-goin’ wrong as fast as she could till she was tuk from me. If she had gone and got into quod I’d ‘ave gone to ‘im, and said, ‘Look at yer darter! ‘Ow I’ve ruined her as you did mine.’”

      “You wicked woman,” said Calton, revolted at the malignity of the scheme. “You sacrificed an innocent girl for this.”

      “None of yer preachin’,” retorted the hag sullenly; “I ain’t bin brought up for a saint, I ain’t—an’ I wanted to pay ‘im out—‘e paid me well to ‘old my tongue about my darter, an’ I’ve got it ‘ere,” laying her hand on the pillow, “all gold, good gold—an’ mine, cuss me.”

      Calton rose, he felt quite sick at this exhibition of human depravity, and longed to be away. As he was putting on his hat, however, the two girls entered with the