Works of Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens [4727]
While saying these words, he had handed Bintrey's very short letter to Obenreizer, who now read it and gave it back.
"In saying," observed Obenreizer, with recovered composure, "that he is coming to confer with you, this English lawyer means that he is coming to deny my authority over my ward."
"You think so?"
"I am sure of it. I know him. He is obstinate and contentious. You will tell me, my dear sir, whether my authority is unassailable, until my ward is of age?"
"Absolutely unassailable."
"I will enforce it. I will make her submit herself to it. For," said Obenreizer, changing his angry tone to one of grateful submission, "I owe it to you, sir; to you, who have so confidingly taken an injured man under your protection, and into your employment."
"Make your mind easy," said Maitre Voigt. "No more of this now, and no thanks! Be here to-morrow morning, before the other clerk comes--between seven and eight. You will find me in this room; and I will myself initiate you in your work. Go away! go away! I have letters to write. I won't hear a word more."
Dismissed with this generous abruptness, and satisfied with the favourable impression he had left on the old man's mind, Obenreizer was at leisure to revert to the mental note he had made that Maitre Voigt once had a client whose name was Vendale.
"I ought to know England well enough by this time;" so his meditations ran, as he sat on a bench in the yard; "and it is not a name I ever encountered there, except--" he looked involuntarily over his shoulder--"as _his_ name. Is the world so small that I cannot get away from him, even now when he is dead? He confessed at the last that he had betrayed the trust of the dead, and misinherited a fortune. And I was to see to it. And I was to stand off, that my face might remind him of it. Why _my_ face, unless it concerned _me_? I am sure of his words, for they have been in my ears ever since. Can there be anything bearing on them, in the keeping of this old idiot? Anything to repair my fortunes, and blacken his memory? He dwelt upon my earliest remembrances, that night at Basle. Why, unless he had a purpose in it?"
Maitre Voigt's two largest he-goats were butting at him to butt him out of the place, as if for that disrespectful mention of their master. So he got up and left the place. But he walked alone for a long time on the border of the lake, with his head drooped in deep thought.
Between seven and eight next morning, he presented himself again at the office. He found the notary ready for him, at work on some papers which had come in on the previous evening. In a few clear words, Maitre Voigt explained the routine of the office, and the duties Obenreizer would be expected to perform. It still wanted five minutes to eight, when the preliminary instructions were declared to be complete.
"I will show you over the house and the offices," said Maitre Voigt, "but I must put away these papers first. They come from the municipal authorities, and they must be taken special care of."
Obenreizer saw his chance, here, of finding out the repository in which his employer's private papers were kept.
"Can't I save you the trouble, sir?" he asked. "Can't I put those documents away under your directions?"
Maitre Voigt laughed softly to himself; closed the portfolio in which the papers had been sent to him; handed it to Obenreizer.
"Suppose you try," he said. "All my papers of importance are kept yonder."
He pointed to a heavy oaken door, thickly studded with nails, at the lower end of the room. Approaching the door, with the portfolio, Obenreizer discovered, to his astonishment, that there were no means whatever of opening it from the outside. There was no handle, no bolt, no key, and (climax of passive obstruction!) no keyhole.
"There is a second door to this room?" said Obenreizer, appealing to the notary.
"No," said Maitre Voigt. "Guess again."
"There is a window?"
"Nothing of the sort. The window has been