第77章

`Getting evidence together,' said Mr Wemmick, as we came out, `for the Bailey.' In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased - and who was in an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a faceache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr Jaggers's own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went down-stairs again, Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, `This you've seen already.'

`Pray,' said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon them caught my sight again, `whose likenesses are those?'

`These?' said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down. `These are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly.'

`Is it like him?' I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.

`Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for me, hadn't you, Old Artful?' said Wemmick. He then explained this affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying, `Had it made for me, express!'

`Is the lady anybody?' said I.

`No,' returned Wemmick. `Only his game. (You liked your bit of game, didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr Pip, except one - and she wasn't of this slender ladylike sort, and you wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn - unless there was something to drink in it.' Wemmick's attention being thus directed to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch with his pocket-handkerchief.

`Did that other creature come to the same end?' I asked. `He has the same look.'

`You're right,' said Wemmick; `it's the genuine look. Much as if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fish-hook. Yes, he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the supposed testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, though' (Mr Wemmick was again apostrophizing), `and you said you could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were!Inever met such a liar as you!' Before putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings and said, `Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before.'