Чье тело? / Whose Body?

Sir Reuben Levy’s cook, with her eye upon Mr. Bunter’s gentlemanly and well-tailored appearance, hastened to produce what was necessary. Her visitor placed on the table a basket, containing a water-bottle, a silver-backed hair-brush, a pair of boots, a small roll of linoleum, and the “Letters of a Self-made Merchant to His Son,” bound in polished morocco. He drew an umbrella from beneath his arm and added it to the collection. He then advanced a ponderous photographic machine and set it up in the neighbourhood of the kitchen range; then, spreading a newspaper over the fair, scrubbed surface of the table, he began to roll up his sleeves and insinuate himself into a pair of surgical gloves. Sir Reuben Levy’s valet, entering at the moment and finding him thus engaged, put aside the kitchenmaid, who was staring from a front-row position, and inspected the apparatus critically. Mr. Bunter nodded brightly to him, and uncorked a small bottle of grey powder.

“Odd sort of fish, your employer, isn’t he?” said the valet, carelessly.

“Very singular, indeed,” said Mr. Bunter. “Now, my dear,” he added, ingratiatingly, to the kitchen-maid, “I wonder if you’d just pour a little of this grey powder over the edge of the bottle while I’m holding it – and the same with this boot – here, at the top – thank you, Miss – what is your name? Price? Oh, but you’ve got another name besides Price, haven’t you? Mabel, eh? That’s a name I’m uncommonly partial to – that’s very nicely done, you’ve a steady hand, Miss Mabel – see that? That’s the finger marks – three there, and two here, and smudged over in both places. No, don’t you touch ’em, my dear, or you’ll rub the bloom off. We’ll stand ’em up here till they’re ready to have their portraits taken. Now then, let’s take the hair-brush next. Perhaps, Mrs. Pemming, you’d like to lift him up very carefully by the bristles.”

“By the bristles, Mr. Bunter?”

“If you please, Mrs. Pemming – and lay him here. Now, Miss Mabel, another little exhibition of your skill, if you please. No – we’ll try lamp-black this time. Perfect. Couldn’t have done it better myself. Ah! there’s a beautiful set. No smudges this time. That’ll interest his lordship. Now the little book – no, I’ll pick that up myself – with these gloves, you see, and by the edges – I’m a careful criminal, Mrs. Pemming, I don’t want to leave any traces. Dust the cover all over, Miss Mabel; now this side – that’s the way to do it. Lots of prints and no smudges. All according to plan. Oh, please, Mr. Graves, you mustn’t touch it – it’s as much as my place is worth to have it touched.”

“D’you have to do much of this sort of thing?” inquired Mr. Graves, from a superior standpoint.

“Any amount,” replied Mr. Bunter, with a groan calculated to appeal to Mr. Graves’s heart and unlock his confidence. “If you’d kindly hold one end of this bit of linoleum, Mrs. Pemming, I’ll hold up this end while Miss Mabel operates. Yes, Mr. Graves, it’s a hard life, valeting by day and developing by night – morning tea at any time from 6.30 to 11, and criminal investigation at all hours. It’s wonderful, the ideas these rich men with nothing to do get into their heads.”

“I wonder you stand it,” said Mr. Graves. “Now there’s none of that here. A quiet, orderly, domestic life, Mr. Bunter, has much to be said for it. Meals at regular hours; decent, respectable families to dinner – none of your painted women – and no valeting at night, there’s much to be said for it. I don’t hold with Hebrews as a rule, Mr. Bunter, and of course I understand that you may find it to your advantage to be in a titled family, but there’s less thought of that these days, and I will say, for a self-made man, no one could call Sir Reuben vulgar, and my lady at any rate is county – Miss Ford, she was, one of the Hampshire Fords, and both of them always most considerate.”

“I agree with you, Mr. Graves – his lordship and me have never held with being narrow-minded – why, yes, my dear, of course it’s a footmark, this is the washstand linoleum. A good Jew can be a good man, that’s what I’ve always said. And regular hours and considerate habits have a great deal to recommend them. Very simple in his tastes, now, Sir Reuben, isn’t he? for such a rich man, I mean.”

“Very simple indeed,” said the cook; “the meals he and her ladyship have when they’re by themselves with Miss Rachel – well, there now – if it wasn’t for the dinners, which is always good when there’s company, I’d be wastin’ my talents and education here, if you understand me, Mr. Bunter.”

Mr. Bunter added the handle of the umbrella to his collection, and began to pin a sheet across the window, aided by the housemaid.

“Admirable,” said he. “Now, if I might have this blanket on the table and another on a towel-horse or something of that kind by way of a background – you’re very kind, Mrs. Pemming…. Ah! I wish his lordship never wanted valeting at night. Many’s the time I’ve sat up till three and four, and up again to call him early to go off Sherlocking at the other end of the country. And the mud he gets on his clothes and his boots!”

“I’m sure it’s a shame, Mr. Bunter,” said Mrs. Pemming, warmly. “Low, I calls it. In my opinion, police-work ain’t no fit occupation for a gentleman, let alone a lordship.”

“Everything made so difficult, too,” said Mr. Bunter nobly sacrificing his employer’s character and his own feelings in a good cause; “boots chucked into a corner, clothes hung up on the floor, as they say – ”

“That’s often the case with these men as are born with a silver spoon in their mouths,” said Mr. Graves. “Now, Sir Reuben, he’s never lost his good old-fashioned habits. Clothes folded up neat, boots put out in his dressing-room, so as a man could get them in the morning, everything made easy.”

“He forgot them the night before last, though.”

“The clothes, not the boots. Always thoughtful for others, is Sir Reuben. Ah! I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

“Indeed, no, poor gentleman,” chimed in the cook, “and as for what they’re sayin’, that he’d ’ave gone out surrepshous-like to do something he didn’t ought, well, I’d never believe it of him, Mr. Bunter, not if I was to take my dying oath upon it.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Bunter, adjusting his arc-lamps and connecting them with the nearest electric light, “and that’s more than most of us could say of them as pays us.”

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