Hunted Down: The Detective Story of Charles Dickens
Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles DickensI.II.III.IV.V.Copyright
Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
I.
I.
Most of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as
Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the
last thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men,
however unpromising the opportunity may, at first sight,
seem.As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means
that I used to want, of considering what I have seen, at
leisure. My experiences have a more remarkable aspect, so
reviewed, than they had when they were in progress. I have
come home from the Play now, and can recall the scenes of the Drama
upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare,
bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre.Let me recall one of these Romances of the real
world.There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection
with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal
Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own page
with the individual character written on it, is a difficult one,
perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some natural
aptitude, and it must require (for everything does) some patience
and some pains. That these are not usually given to it,—that
numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of the
face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor
know the refinements that are truest,—that You, for instance, give
a great deal of time and attention to the reading of music, Greek,
Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not qualify
yourself to read the face of the master or mistress looking over
your shoulder teaching it to you,—I assume to be five hundred times
more probable than improbable. Perhaps a little
self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression
requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you to
know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.I confess, for my part, that Ihavebeen taken in, over and over
again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been
taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any
other class of persons. How came I to be so deceived?
Had I quite misread their faces?No. Believe me, my first impression of those people,
founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My
mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain
themselves away.
II.
The partition which separated my own office from our general
outer office in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could
see through it what passed in the outer office, without hearing a
word. I had it put up in place of a wall that had been there
for years,—ever since the house was built. It is no matter
whether I did or did not make the change in order that I might
derive my first impression of strangers, who came to us on
business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by
anything they said. Enough to mention that I turned my glass
partition to that account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at
all times exposed to be practised upon by the most crafty and cruel
of the human race.It was through my glass partition that I first saw the
gentleman whose story I am going to tell.He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat
and umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take
some papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty or so,
dark, exceedingly well dressed in black,—being in mourning,—and the
hand he extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting
black-kid glove upon it. His hair, which was elaborately
brushed and oiled, was parted straight up the middle; and he
presented this parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if
he had said, in so many words: ‘You must take me, if you please, my
friend, just as I show myself. Come straight up here, follow
the gravel path, keep off the grass, I allow no
trespassing.’I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I
thus saw him.He had asked for some of our printed forms, and the clerk was
giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and
agreeable smile was on his face, and his eyes met those of the
clerk with a sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity of
nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face.
Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare
honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is
anything to be got by it.)I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of
my looking at him. Immediately he turned the parting in his
hair toward the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet
smile, ‘Straight up here, if you please. Off the
grass!’In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his
umbrella, and was gone.