The Appointed Time

It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the
shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and
fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down
the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine
o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are
shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of
sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows
clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a
fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and
conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes
of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an
acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their
species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,
for every day, some good account at last.

In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and
bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and
supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged
with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been
lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and
scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of
passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged
congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on
a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and
the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the
testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of
their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the
Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano
through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and
where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar
like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a
concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to
"Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.
Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of
professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who
has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,
Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year
and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,
and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every
night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.
"Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my
living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the
same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public
applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.
Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms
appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that
tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.
Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was
fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to
bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court
and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen
in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,
the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be
suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis
that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there
is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming
night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the
sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the
registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the
air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something in himself that is
in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He
comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty
times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since
the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,
Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight
velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all
proportion), oftener than before.

It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for
he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the
secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a
partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what
seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court.
It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by
the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out
at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated
after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back
again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.

"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are YOU
there?"

"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."

"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer
inquires.

"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not
very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.

"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to
sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,
that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're rather
greasy here, sir?"

"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in
the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the
Sol's Arms."

"Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes
again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at
the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir!
And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then
spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think--not to put too fine a
point upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the
gridiron."

"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."

"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find it
sinking to the spirits."

"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.

"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,
with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby, looking
in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling
back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room
alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an
evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and
stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you
didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference."

"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.

"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough
of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it
in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."

"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."

"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.
"Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the
law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby with his
apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the profession I
get my living by."

Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the
stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a
star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his
way out of this conversation.

"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,
"that he should have been--"

"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.

"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and
right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on
the button.

"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of
the subject. "I thought we had done with him."

"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should
have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that
you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which
there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"
says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have
unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, "because
I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done
really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir," adds Mr.
Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.

"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more
glancing up and down the court.

"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.

"There does."

"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "Quite
a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid
you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go,
though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since
he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be looking for me else.
Good night, sir!"

If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of
looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His
little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this
time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over
her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching
glance as she goes past.

"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to
himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you
are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER
coming!"

This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his
finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.
Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is
he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they
speak low.

"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,"
says Tony.

"Why, I said about ten."

"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten.
But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred
o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"

"What has been the matter?"

"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here have I
been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the
horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-looking
candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his
table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.

"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers
in hand.

"IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been
smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."

"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy, looking
at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the
table.

"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this
unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I
suppose." Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with
his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,
and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his
head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy
attitude.

"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"

"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the
construction of his sentence.

"On business?"

"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."

"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well
that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."

"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an
instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to
commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"

Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the
conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the
room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey
with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she
is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a
vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious
piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of
fur, and a bracelet on her arm.

"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking
likeness."

"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I
should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."

Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a
more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and
remonstrates with him.

"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for
no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I
do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who
has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are bounds
to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will
acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the
present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."

"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.

"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly
when I use it."

Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy
to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the
advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured
remonstrance.

"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be
careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited
image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those
chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in
yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the
taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I
could say the same--it is not your character to hover around one
flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry
you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound
even your feelings without a cause!"

Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying
emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with
the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."

"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle
of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have
appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"

"Very. What did he do it for?"

"What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his
birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll
have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."

"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"

"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him
to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he had got
the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed 'em
me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his
cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I
heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming
like the wind, the only song he knows--about Bibo, and old Charon,
and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been
as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."

"And you are to go down at twelve?"

"At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a
hundred."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs
crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"

"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and
he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on
that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to
acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do
you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"

"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has
and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye
alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and
asked me what it meant."

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,
"should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"

"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end of
the letter 'n,' long and hasty."

Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,
generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he
is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It
takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.

"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is
there a chimney on fire?"

"Chimney on fire!"

"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my
arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow
off--smears like black fat!"

They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a
little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says
it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to
Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.

"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable
aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before
the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads
very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle
of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"

"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his
whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable
William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and
advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."

The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed
by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and
his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears
to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.

"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and
to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's
the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting
his thumb-nail.

"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."

"I tell you what, Tony--"

"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his
sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.

"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another
packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one
while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."

"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with
his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely
than not," suggests Tony.

"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never
did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal friend
of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible,
won't they?"

"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.

"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt
William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"

"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the
other gravely.

"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little;
but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't
speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all,
forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"

"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in
secrecy, a pair of conspirators."

"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of
noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's
the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"

"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable,
after all."

Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the
mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the
honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that
friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be
called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend
is no fool. What's that?"

"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and
you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,
resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than
their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of
whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,
haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the
rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of
dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter
snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full
of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one
consent to see that the door is shut.

"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting
his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"

"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in
the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."

"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."

"May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see how
YOU like it."

"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,
"there have been dead men in most rooms."

"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and
they let you alone," Tony answers.

The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to
the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he
hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring
the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been
stirred instead.

"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let
us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."

He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in
and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to
admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking
up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of
distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir
of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping
on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy
tone.

"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger of
that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather
of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."

"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."

"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really
has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to
you, since you have been such allies?"

Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get through
this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better
informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't
know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking
them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and
what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be
the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a
monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been
going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should
judge, from what he tells me."

"How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question,"
Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic
meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought, where
papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd
head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are
worth something."

"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may
have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got,
and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and
hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.

Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing
all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap
it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily
draws his hand away.

"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"

A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch
and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil
with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.

"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of
window?"

"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been
here!" cries the lodger.

And yet look here--and look here! When he brings the candle here,
from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away
down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.

"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window.
"Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."

He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he
has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood
silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and
all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various
heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet
again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last. Shall I
go?"

Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not
with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.

He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the
fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the
stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.

"Have you got them?"

"Got them! No. The old man's not there."

He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his
terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,
"What's the matter?"

"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked
in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the
oil is there--and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.

Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and
holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has
retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something
on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in
the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room
and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and
table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as
usual. On one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.

"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these
objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last,
he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung
his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there already, for he
had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and I left
him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that
crumbled black thing is upon the floor."

Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.

"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a
dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went
round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,
before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it
fall."

"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"

"Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."

They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains
where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground
before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the
light.

Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a
little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to
be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small
charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,
striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,
is all that represents him.

Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty will
come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true
to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord
chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under
all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice
is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute
it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you
will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred, engendered
in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that
only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that
can be died.

It's a nervous night around the law courts for some reason. Mr. Weevle is pacing in his room at Krook's. He looks out the window and sees Snagsby, who is still all discombobulated from being a small part of the Jo mystery. They chat about the dead guy that used to live in Weevle's room. Weevle is a huge fan of this morbid conversation, as you can imagine. Finally Snagsby goes away, followed by a disguised Mrs. Snagsby. She is apparently still spying on him. As soon as he leaves, Guppy pops out. Evidently he's late for the meeting he and Weevle were planning. They start whispering and plotting. It becomes clear that Guppy doesn't actually have the letters he told Lady Dedlock about. Krook has them and is supposed to hand them over to Tony at midnight to help him read them, at which point Guppy will steal them. They're kind of pathetic criminals, if what they're planning to do can even be considered a crime in the first place . Both are freaking out about being in the scary room in the middle of night. Tony is particularly nervous and worried. All of a sudden some kind of gook and nasty gunk starts falling around them in the room. Since it's midnight, Tony goes down to see Krook. At first he finds nothing but some kind of grease and oil all over the place. When they shine a lamp around they discover... Krook's cat eating his remains! Krook is dead! And he died of... spontaneous combustion!

Snagsby the law stationer, still spied upon by his wife, meets with Mr. Weevle near old Krook's house. When they go in, both men become aware of a strange odor like that of tainted and burned meat. Snagsby is so dismayed by it that he leaves. At about ten o'clock, Guppy arrives and goes upstairs with Weevle. At midnight the two are to meet Krook, who is supposed to bring letters written by Captain Hawdon. They sit waiting, more and more uneasily, in the room where Hawdon was found dead. Greasy soot continually falls from the air, the smell of burnt fat persists, and finally the two men discover a horribly offensive yellow liquid on one of the window sills. Weevle goes to meet Krook, but he is unable to find him. In Krook's back room, the two find that the smell of burning originates there and that it seems to be Krook himself who has burned up -- a victim of "spontaneous combustion." Incinerated with him, apparently, are the Hawdon letters. Horrified, Weevle and Guppy flee.

These are among the grisliest pages in all of Dickens' work. The eerie atmosphere and the suspense are masterfully created. The chapter does little to advance the plot, but the sense of brooding and threatening evil enhances the story's theme of the appalling loss and destructiveness wrought by "the law's delay." Dickens believed in the possibility of death by "spontaneous combustion."

"The Appointed Time" The narrator describes nighttime in Lincoln's Inn. Two women, Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, gossip about Krook's alcoholism, his lodger, and their own children. Krook has gone to bed, and his lodger, Mr. Weevle , paces restlessly from his room to the street and back. Mr. Snagsby, uneasy at the mystery he has somehow become involved in, comes to Krook's shop and is surprised to find Weevle outside. Mr. Snagsby tells Weevle that he would find it troubling to live in a room where a man died. He tells Weevle how strange it is that the lodger had been a writer for him, just as Weevle is. Mr. Snagsby hurries home. Meanwhile, Mrs. Snagsby has followed him. Weevle was waiting for Mr. Guppy, who arrives after Mr. Snagsby has left. They go inside. Weevle tells Guppy he is depressed in his room. Guppy says he saw Mr. Snagsby talking to him but thought it best to stay hidden until he left. Weevle asserts that they are as secretive as they'd be if they were murdering someone. Guppy looks around Weevle's room and sees a portrait of Lady Dedlock, believing it to be a good likeness. Guppy tells Weevle his attitude isn't appropriate for the matter at hand, picking up the lodger's letters from Krook. Krook has arranged to meet them at midnight. Weevle assures Guppy that Krook can't read. Guppy notices that his coat sleeve is covered in soot, and it won't brush off. The men agree to make copies of the letters as soon as Krook turns them over. When Guppy sits on the windowsill, he gets yellow liquor all over his hands. Weevle denies pouring anything out of the window, even though the liquor is dripping from the windowsill. At midnight, Weevle goes to Krook's to get the letters, but he comes back quickly and says that Krook is gone. Both men go back downstairs to Krook's and look around. They find a burnt patch on the floor and some other evidence of burning. What they think is a burnt log is actually a piece of Krook, and the men run screaming into the street. Krook has spontaneously combusted

The Appointed Time At Krook's shop, Snagsby is out for a walk and talks to Mr. Weevle his new law-writer who is outside waiting for someone. They remark on how greasy the air is. Snagsby says he couldn't live in that room where Nemo died. Weevle agrees the house gives him the horrors. Snagsby leaves and Guppy comes up. Guppy and Weevle discuss the appointment at midnight with Krook when they will get the letters from him that Guppy will take to Lady Dedlock. It seems Krook had taken the letters from Nemo's trunk, was able to spell out "Hawdon" and agreed to let them look at the letters. They plot about giving him back a fake bundle. They too talk about the air being oily, and even more so in Weevle's room where Nemo died. There is soot falling everywhere and Guppy puts his hand on the windowsill where there is a repulsive yellow oil. At midnight they go to meet Krook, but he is not there. There are his charred clothes and a bundle of ashes. Krook has gone up in smoke in a case of Spontaneous Combustion.

Commentary on Chapter XXXII In the author's preface, Dickens defends the reality of "spontaneous human combustion" when a body burns up, "engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself" . Krook's body was soaked in alcohol, and in the wick theory, he could have ignited sitting by the fire. Dickens, however, maintains there was no external source of fire, and this fits in with his symbolism of the corruption of Chancery. Corruption must sooner or later explode of its own nature, like Krook, the mock Lord Chancellor. He has died the death that all die "where false pretenses are made, and where injustice is done" .


Interlopers

Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons
who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in
the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly
fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute
perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and
write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note
down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery
Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the
most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and
horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be
remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the
public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the
first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general
marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits,
far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable
coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be
recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a
well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question
on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr.
James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible)
how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was
observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical
occurrence which forms the subject of that present account
transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr.
Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby,
has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M.
Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise
engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called
Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at
the Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of
George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously
affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression
at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he
hadn't a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is
entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in
the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and
Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded
them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook,
the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two
gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy
catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the
court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's
Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about
it.

The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night,
and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the
ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued
from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a
bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts
its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for
the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house
has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in
brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard
what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his
shoulders and said, "There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry,
young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph
at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to
that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and
torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all
chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in
company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in
charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of
sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid
form.

Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and
are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only
stay there. "This is not a time," says Mr. Bogsby, "to haggle about
money," though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter;
"give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever
you put a name to."

Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names
to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to
put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to
all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of
what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile,
one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing
it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from
outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well
know what they are up to in there.

Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of
bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated,
still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little
money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating
steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an
executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire
that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh,
whether or no.

And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court
has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen
drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors
instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court
itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and
beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half
dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who
are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do
to keep the door.

"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's this
I hear!"

"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is.
Now move on here, come!"

"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly
backed away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven
o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here."

"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next
door then. Now move on here, some of you."

"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.

"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"

Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his
troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle
languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him
of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.

"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What
a fate there seems in all this! And my lit--"

Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the
words "my little woman." For to see that injured female walk into the
Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the
beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,
strikes him dumb.

"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you
take anything? A little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop of
shrub?"

"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.

"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"

"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their
presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.

The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.
Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.

"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do
it."

"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I
wouldn't."

Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you
really, my dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and
says, "This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully
disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.

"It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful
mystery."

"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for
goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me
in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good
Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any
person, my dear?"

"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.

On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't
say" either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have
had something to do with it. He has had something--he don't know
what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it
is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the
present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his
handkerchief and gasps.

"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections
to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your
conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"

"Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.

"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has
happened to the venerable party who has been--combusted." Mr. Snagsby
has made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have related
them to you, my love, over your French roll."

"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."

"Every--my lit--"

"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his
increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would
come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than
anywhere else."

"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to
go."

Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.
Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with
which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the
Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible
for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of
the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs.
Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are
so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up
to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with
the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into
Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as
many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.

"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says
Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the
square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must,
with very little delay, come to an understanding."

"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his
companion with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you
needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that,
and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire
next or blowing up with a bang."

This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy
that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have
thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson
to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived." To which
Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should have thought it would have
been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you
lived." To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?" To which Mr.
Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "No, I
am not." To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" To which
Mr. Guppy retorts, "Who says so?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "I
say so!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Oh, indeed?" To which Mr.
Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both being now in a heated state,
they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.

"Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of
flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is
hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all
that is calculated to charm the eye--"

"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what
you have got to say!"

Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy
only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of
injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on
which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite
apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is
professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what
facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that
we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the
death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?" (Mr. Guppy was going to
say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the
circumstances.)

"What facts? THE facts."

"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are"--Mr. Guppy tells them
off on his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw him
last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and
how we made it."

"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."

"We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric
way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you
were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on
account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with
you, was called down--and so forth. The inquiry being only into the
circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary
to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"

"No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."

"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.

"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I
withdraw the observation."

"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him
slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you
have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live
at that place?"

"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.

"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your
continuing to live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on
again.

"At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and
bottle shop.

Mr. Guppy nods.

"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that
you could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.

"Do you mean it though, Tony?"

"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,"
says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.

"Then the possibility or probability--for such it must be
considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of those
effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no
relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find
out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at
all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy,
biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.

"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?"
cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."

"Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived
there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got
one."

"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may make
yourself at home in it."

"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up
the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"

"You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said
a truer word in all your life. I do!"

While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square,
on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to
the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the
multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach
stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs.
Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.

An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall
hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed
the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How
de do, sir! How de do!"

"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning,
I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.

"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a
favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me
into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring
their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn,
sir?"

Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The
public-house in the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable
burden to the Sol's Arms.

"There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce
grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more,
and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy
with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't
squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my
bones!"

It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an
apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With
no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of
divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he
fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman
is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.

"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from
an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and
pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling
poll-parrot! Sit down!"

This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a
propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds
herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects,
accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A
nervous affection has probably as much to do with these
demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but
on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion
with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is
seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held
her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with
great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw,"
repeated a surprising number of times.

"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr.
Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either
of you?"

"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."

"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!"

The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the
compliment.

"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his
hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy
office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."

"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.

"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. We were
not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on
terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric--he was very
eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I
shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look
after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I
have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air
towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the
property."

"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have
mentioned that the old man was your uncle."

"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to
be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye.
"Besides, I wasn't proud of him."

"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or
not," says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.

"He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't
know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!"

"No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old
gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property--to
look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make
good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn,
of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as
my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye.
Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but
Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of
your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years
of age."

Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,
"Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of
money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of
bank-notes!"

"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated
husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within
his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody
hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat,
you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the
highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her
grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin
at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping
into his chair in a heap.

"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from
within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I
have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the
police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the
property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the
property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch
the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and
putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and
punching, he still repeats like an echo, "The--the property! The
property! Property!"

Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having
relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited
countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.
But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed
interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew in
the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is
answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that
the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due
time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert
his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next
house and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks
like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.

The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court
still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.
Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there
really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be
made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members
of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the
foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump
and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings
take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson
enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that
these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals
and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up "The popular song of King
Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the
great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that "J.
G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in
consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the
bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a
late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation." There is
one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is
particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin
should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the
undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that
he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general
solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr.
Smallweed's conduct does him great honour.

Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable
excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and
carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same
intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and
phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of
these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that
the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being
reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence
for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical
Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical
jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess
Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of
Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard
of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the
testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who
WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative
testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once
upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a
case occurred and even to write an account of it--still they regard
the late Mr. Krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such
by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the
court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the
greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms.
Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground
and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish
coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in
Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws
in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in fact,
considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being
permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts
that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high,
at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two
gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist
at the philosophical disputations--go everywhere and listen to
everybody--and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour and
writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.

At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that
the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and
tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that
would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined
house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't
account for!" After which the six-footer comes into action and is
much admired.

In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when
he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual
and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the
mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of
bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings
draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the
catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady
Dedlock.

For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense
of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's Arms
have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at
the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests
to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner;
don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage
at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.

Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a
fellow-gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his
instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the
young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young
man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.

Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering
everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or
wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost, but
fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.

"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very
downcast. "This is an inconvenient time--"

"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking
straight at him as on the last occasion.

"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."

"You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.

"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down
and detaining you, for I--I have not got the letters that I mentioned
when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."

"Have you come merely to say so?"

"Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy besides being depressed,
disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the
splendour and beauty of her appearance.

She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a
grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and
coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least
perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also
that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and
further from her.

She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.

"In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent
thief, "the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a
sudden end, and--" He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the
sentence.

"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"

Mr. Guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide.

"I believe so, your ladyship."

If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he
could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly
put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.

He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.

"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard
him out--or as nearly out as he can stumble.

Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.

"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this
being the last time you will have the opportunity."

Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present,
by any means.

"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!"
And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy
out.

But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old
man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his
quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the
handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young
man as he is leaving the room.

One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the
blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks
out. Another instant, close again.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times.
It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the
room was empty. I beg your pardon!"

"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am
going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"

The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes
that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.

"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent
brows, though he has no need to look again--not he. "From Kenge and
Carboy's, surely?"

"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."

"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"

"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of
the profession."

"Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"

Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his
old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her
down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and
rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.

So of course the neighborhood goes crazy. The local bar is doing a brisk business, since every single person needs a drink when they hear the crazy news about Krook bursting into flames. The bar owner gives Guppy and Jobling drinks on the house to keep them at the bar, since they're attracting business by telling the story over and over again. Snagsby comes to check out whatever is going on. He is so confused and guilty feeling that he wants to turn himself in to the police - for no reason. He's an odd duck. Mrs. Snagsby, as always, follows him. She confronts him without actually telling him what she is upset about and takes him home. Guppy takes Jobling aside and tells him that they need to get their stories straight for the upcoming inquest. Basically they can tell the whole thing the way it happened and just leave out the detail about the letters. Then Guppy asks whether Jobling wants to stay in his apartment and try to dig around in Krook's piles of documents to see if there is anything valuable there. Jobling is going a little nuts about everything and is upset at even the thought of staying at that horrible place. They argue, but everything is fine, then the Smallweeds pull up in a carriage. Old Smallweed is taken to the neighborhood bar, and after a good amount of yelling at the rambling, senile Mrs. Smallweed, he announces that Krook was...her brother! Since Krook had no other relatives, and there is most likely no will, the Smallweeds inherit the whole of his property. He is here to claim it and lock it up. Tulkinghorn is on his way to serve as Smallweed's lawyer in this inheritance deal. Guppy has a giant case of d'oh, complete with forehead slapping. The neighborhood is suddenly overrun by journalists, doctors, scientists, and other experts, all of whom are trying to figure out how spontaneous combustion could possibly occur in a human being. All the new hustle and bustle is yet again good for business at the local bar. The neighbors are also relieved to hear that a full-size coffin has been ordered even though there isn't much of Krook's body actually left to put in it. The inquest is held and spontaneous combustion is determined to be the cause of death. Meanwhile, Guppy goes to see Lady Dedlock. She is super-cold and overbearing with him. He fesses up that he has no letters and that maybe they were destroyed with Krook. Or maybe not. She says, OK, fine, whatever, and tells him to leave. But just as he is leaving, into the room walks... Tulkinghorn! Who of course has free entry into the Dedlock house. Lady Dedlock makes like she doesn't care, and Guppy sort of shuffles out with a small greeting. But Tulkinghorn immediately recognizes him, sees a strange scared/guilty expression for a moment on Lady Dedlock's face, and tries to put the pieces together.

Guppy and Jobling have gone to the Sol's Arms tavern adjoining Krook's shop. Alarmed or merely curious about what happened, numerous people of the area crowd into the tavern, many remaining awake all night. Snagsby comes in, is puzzled about the "combustion," and is soon confronted by his wife, who wants to know why he is there. Then the whole family of Smallweeds appears, and Grandfather Smallweed, whose wife turns out to be Krook's sister, lays claim to Krook's property. The following night, Guppy visits Lady Dedlock and says that he will be unable to deliver the Hawdon letters he promised to bring her. As Guppy leaves, he sees Tulkinghorn; the old lawyer immediately becomes suspicious.

Dickens strengthens artistic unity by establishing, through Krook, a relationship between the main plot and the subplot involving the Smallweeds. At the end of the chapter, the motif of Tulkinghorn's obsession with Lady Dedlock resumes.

"Interlopers" Weevle and Guppy give their statements at a tavern called Sol's Arms. No one sleeps that night; everyone goes to look at Krook's house. Miss Flite stays at a room at the Sol's Arms. Sol's Arms stays open all night, and Weevle and Guppy tell everyone about what they saw. Mr. Snagsby arrives, along with Mrs. Snagsby. She tells him she can't say for sure he wouldn't spontaneously combust. Mr. Snagsby secretly wonders if he was in some way responsible for what happened. Weevle and Guppy go for a walk. Both men deny that they've been conspiring but agree that they don't need to mention the letters. Weevle tells Guppy he can't stay in his room anymore, but Guppy tries to convince him to stay and investigate. Weevle says Guppy can stay there if he wants. Grandfather and Grandmother Smallweed and Judy arrive in a coach. Grandfather Smallweed asks them to carry him into the public house in the court. He is surprised to learn that Guppy discovered Krook's death and says Krook was Grandmother Smallweed's brother. Grandfather Smallweed has come to deal with Krook's property. His lawyer is Mr. Tulkinghorn. Mr. Guppy eventually meets with Lady Dedlock and tells her he doesn't have the letters. He says he believes they were destroyed along with Krook. On his way out of the room, he runs into Mr. Tulkinghorn, who gives Lady Dedlock a suspicious look

The idea of contagious illnesses appears twice in Bleak House: the smallpox that Jo, Charley, and Esther suffer from, as well as the contagious fervor of the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, of which Richard is the latest victim. Both Esther and Richard are irrevocably changed by their illnesses. Although Esther survives her smallpox, she suffers greatly--even going temporarily blind--and emerges with a scarred face. Her appearance is so altered that Charley removes all the mirrors from her rooms, and for several chapters Esther doesn't attempt to see what she looks like. Although she puts up her usual strong front and resists the urge to indulge in self-pity, the very absence of any melancholy wallowing in her narrative is itself evidence of her sadness. For his part, Richard has ceased to be the loving, warm young man Mr. Jarndyce, Esther, and Ada know and love. Instead, his passion for Jarndyce and Jarndyce has made him suspicious, angry, and distant. Esther knows that she'll never be beautiful again, but she retains the hope that Richard will see the error of his ways. The complicated financial arrangement between George, Mr. Smallweed, and the Bagnets, which is nearly impossible to understand, reflects both the tangled web of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as well as the interconnecting threads of the novel's many storylines. We have the facts, or what seem to be the facts: George once borrowed money from Mr. Bagnet to buy his shooting gallery; Mr. Bagnet borrowed this money from Mr. Smallweed with the understanding that George would repay it; and Mr. Smallweed, generally willing to collect interest instead of demanding repayment, is now demanding payment in full because he's upset that George wouldn't provide the lodger's handwriting. The vaguer aspects of this situation include the many references to the "arrangement" George has with Mr. Smallweed; Mr. Smallweed's "friend in the city," who may be Richard or who may be no one at all; and George's deep devotion to the Bagnets. Dickens does not spend much time elaborating on every element of this messy grouping, and a full understanding of the particulars isn't the point. Instead, we get a clear sense that characters are linked to each other in complicated ways, that loyalties can be tested, and that motivations are not always what they seem. The shadowy dealings of Mr. Smallweed and George's growing desperation add more sinister tones to the developing plot. Esther's confession about Mr. Woodcourt at the end of chapter 35 isn't a complete surprise, but it is remarkable in that it reveals the skill and agility of Esther's storytelling. Although Esther had dropped hints earlier in her narrative about her feelings for Mr. Woodcourt, confirming those feelings here--at the moment when she knows she is no longer beautiful--heightens the emotional effect. Now we understand, in part, why she never revealed her feelings before--as the narrator, she knew that she would get smallpox and indulging in romantic speculations and digressions may therefore have been painful or even irrelevant to her. Only at this point, when discussing Mr. Woodcourt's heroics and return does Esther finally reveal that he may have loved her. This confession threatens to be egotistical, since she has just been told what a valiant hero Mr. Woodcourt is. However, the twist to her confession--that she is happy he never told her his feelings--stops it from being so. Instead, Esther reveals that she is glad she would not have to be a "chain" for him to "drag," assuming he would never love her in her changed state. This assumption, and her selfless relief that Mr. Woodcourt is free, are moving, even more so because Esther states her case so briefly and simply, almost as a reluctant afterthought.

Interlopers An immediate inquest is held, as the one for Nemo earlier. The shops stay open all night for the crowds. Meanwhile, Guppy tells Weevle he should stay as a lodger, because they could get all of Krook's papers that he has been holding on to. They must contain a lot of secrets. They are foiled by the Smallweed family who show up, Grandfather Smallweed declaring that Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's brother, and therefore the shop is his. He padlocks the door. Mr. Snagsby is caught lurking with the crowds near Krook's and Mrs. Snagsby hauls him away with an accusing look. Snagsby is filled with torture for withholding Bucket's secret from his wife. Men of science show up at the inquest, interested in the case. Guppy is forced to go to Lady Dedlock and tell her that the person with the letters is dead, and that he believes the letters are destroyed. She quickly dismisses him. Just as Guppy leaves, Tulkinghorn appears, looking at him suspiciously.

Commentary on Chapter XXXIII Lady Dedlock seems to be off the hook momentarily, but Tulkinghorn appears, and the pressure is on again. Guppy's complaint to Weevle that he has "an unrequited image imprinted on his art" indicates that he really thought this transaction was going to further his romance with Esther. His interest in Krook's other papers leads one to believe he also has motives of money and power, like Tulkinghorn. Smallweed being related to Krook is one of the sometimes unbelievable surprises in Dickens, but as the novel unfolds, more and more connections are made between the characters.