The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Matthew Pearl Page B

Jasper.
     
  “I should say not,” assents Durdles;
“then we won't try to give it a name.”
     
  “He still keeps behind us,” repeats
Jasper, looking over his shoulder; “is he to follow us?”
     
  “We can't help going round by the
Travellers” Twopenny, if we go the short way, which is the back way,” Durdles
answers, “and we'll drop him there.”
     
  So they go on; Deputy, as a rear rank
one, taking open order, and invading the silence of the hour and place by
stoning every wall, post, pillar, and other inanimate object, by the deserted
way.
     
  “Is there anything new down in the
crypt, Durdles?” asks John Jasper.
     
  “Anything old, I think you mean,” growls
Durdles. “It ain't a spot for novelty.”
     
  “Any new discovery on your part, I
meant.”
     
  “There's a old “un under the seventh
pillar on the left as you go down the broken steps of the little underground
chapel as formerly was; I make him out (so fur as I've made him out yet) to be
one of them old “uns with a crook. To judge from the size of the passages in
the walls, and of the steps and doors, by which they come and went, them crooks
must have been a good deal in the way of the old “uns! Two on “em meeting promiscuous
must have hitched one another by the mitre pretty often, I should say.”
     
  Without any endeavour to correct the
literality of this opinion, Jasper surveys his companion—covered from head to
foot with old mortar, lime, and stone grit—as though he, Jasper, were getting
imbued with a romantic interest in his weird life.
     
  “Yours is a curious existence.”
     
  Without furnishing the least clue to the
question, whether he receives this as a compliment or as quite the reverse,
Durdles gruffly answers: “Yours is another.”
     
  “Well! inasmuch as my lot is cast in the
same old earthy, chilly, never-changing place, Yes. But there is much more
mystery and interest in your connection with the Cathedral than in mine.
Indeed, I am beginning to have some idea of asking you to take me on as a sort
of student, or free “prentice, under you, and to let me go about with you sometimes,
and see some of these odd nooks in which you pass your days.”
     
  The Stony One replies, in a general way,
“All right. Everybody knows where to find Durdles, when he's wanted.” Which, if
not strictly true, is approximately so, if taken to express that Durdles may
always be found in a state of vagabondage somewhere.
     
  “What I dwell upon most,” says Jasper,
pursuing his subject of romantic interest, “is the remarkable accuracy with
which you would seem to find out where people are buried. —What is the matter?
That bundle is in your way; let me hold it.”
     
  Durdles has stopped and backed a little
(Deputy, attentive to all his movements, immediately skirmishing into the
road), and was looking about for some ledge or corner to place his bundle on,
when thus relieved of it.
     
  “Just you give me my hammer out of
that,” says Durdles, “and I'll show you.”
     
  Clink, clink. And his hammer is handed
him.
     
  “Now, lookee here. You pitch your note,
don't you, Mr. Jasper?”
     
  “Yes.”
     
  “So I sound for mine. I take my hammer,
and I tap.” (Here he strikes the pavement, and the attentive Deputy skirmishes
at a rather wider range, as supposing that his head may be in requisition.) “I
tap, tap, tap. Solid! I go on tapping. Solid still! Tap again. Holloa! Hollow!
Tap again, persevering. Solid in hollow! Tap, tap, tap, to try it better. Solid
in hollow; and inside solid, hollow again! There you are! Old “un crumbled away
in stone coffin, in vault!”
     
  “Astonishing!”
     
  “I have even done this,” says Durdles,
drawing out his two-foot rule (Deputy meanwhile skirmishing nearer, as
suspecting that Treasure may be about to be discovered, which may somehow lead
to his own enrichment, and the delicious treat of the