The Black Mask - E. W. Hornung (10 best books of all time txt) 📗

The Black Mask

By E. W. Hornung.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint No Sinecure I II III A Jubilee Present The Fate of Faustina The Last Laugh To Catch a Thief I II III An Old Flame I II The Wrong House The Knees of the Gods I II III IV Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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No Sinecure I

I am still uncertain which surprised me more, the telegram calling my attention to the advertisement, or the advertisement itself. The telegram is before me as I write. It would appear to have been handed in at Vere Street at eight o’clock in the morning of May 11, 1897, and received before half-past at Holloway B.O. And in that drab region it duly found me, unwashen but at work before the day grew hot and my attic insupportable.

“See Mr. Maturin’s advertisement Daily Mail might suit you earnestly beg try will speak if necessary ⸻”

I transcribe the thing as I see it before me, all in one breath that took away mine; but I leave out the initials at the end, which completed the surprise. They stood very obviously for the knighted specialist whose consulting-room is within a cab-whistle of Vere Street, and who once called me kinsman for his sins. More recently he had called me other names. I was a disgrace, qualified by an adjective which seemed to me another. I had made my bed, and I could go and lie and die in it. If I ever again had the insolence to show my nose in that house, I should go out quicker than I came in. All this, and more, my least distant relative could tell a poor devil to his face; could ring for his man, and give him his brutal instructions on the spot; and then relent to the tune of this telegram! I have no phrase for my amazement. I literally could not believe my eyes. Yet their evidence was more and more conclusive: a very epistle could not have been more characteristic of its sender. Meanly elliptical, ludicrously precise, saving halfpence at the expense of sense, yet paying like a man for “Mr.” Maturin, that was my distinguished relative from his bald patch to his corns. Nor was all the rest unlike him, upon second thoughts. He had a reputation for charity; he was going to live up to it after all. Either that, or it was the sudden impulse of which the most calculating are capable at times; the morning papers with the early cup of tea, this advertisement seen by chance, and the rest upon the spur of a guilty conscience.

Well, I must see it for myself, and the sooner the better, though work pressed. I was writing a series of articles upon prison life, and had my nib into the whole System; a literary and philanthropical daily was parading my “charges,” the graver ones with the more gusto; and the terms, if unhandsome for creative work, were temporary wealth to me. It so happened that my first check had just arrived by the eight o’clock post; and my position should be appreciated when I say that I had to cash it to obtain a Daily Mail.

Of the advertisement itself, what is to be said? It should speak for itself if I could find it, but I cannot, and only remember that it was a “male nurse and constant attendant” that was “wanted for an elderly gentleman in feeble health.” A male nurse! An absurd tag was appended, offering “liberal salary to University or public-school man”; and of a sudden I saw that I should get this thing if I applied for it. What other “University or public-school man” would dream of doing so? Was any other in such straits as I? And then my relenting relative; he not only promised to speak for me, but was the very man to do so. Could any recommendation compete with his in the matter of a male nurse? And need the duties of such be necessarily loathsome and repellent? Certainly the surroundings would be better than those of my common lodging-house and own particular garret; and the food; and every other condition of life that I could think of on my way back to that unsavory asylum. So I dived into a pawnbroker’s shop, where I was a stranger only upon my present errand, and within the hour was airing a decent if antiquated suit, but little corrupted by the pawnbroker’s moth, and a new straw hat, on the top of a tram.

The address given in the advertisement was that of a flat at Earl’s Court, which cost me a cross-country journey, finishing with the District Railway and a seven minutes’ walk. It was now past midday, and the tarry wood-pavement was good to smell as I strode up the Earl’s Court Road. It was great to