Then a diabolical scheme hissed into the listeners’ ears—­a scheme at once cowardly and savage—­a scheme of that terrible kind that robs courage, strength and even skill of their natural advantages, and reduces their owners to the level of the weak and the timid—­a scheme worthy of the assassin of Carlo, and the name I have given this wretch, whose brain was so fertile and his heart so fiendish.  Its effect on the hearers was great, but very different.  Crawley recoiled, not violently, but like a serpent on which water had been poured; but brutus broke into a rapture of admiration, exultation, gratified hate.

“Bless you, bless you!” cried he, with a violence more horrible than his curses, “you warm my heart, you are a pal.  What a head-piece you have got! ——­ you, Smith, have you nothing to say?  Isn’t this a dodge out of the common?”

Now for the last minute or two Crawley’s eyes had been fixed with a haggard expression on a distant corner of the room.  He did not move them; he appeared hardly to have the power, but he answered, dropping the words down on the table anywhere.

“Ye-yes! it is very inge-nious, ah!”

mephisto.  “We must buy the turpentine directly; there is only one store sells it, and that shuts at nine.

brutus.  “Do you hear, Smith? hand us out the blunt.”

Crawley.  “Oh, ugh!” and his eyes seemed fascinated to that spot.

brutus (following Crawley’s eye uneasily).  “What is the matter?”

Crawley.  “Lo-o-o-k th-e-r-e!  No! on your right.  Oh, his tail is in the fire!”

brutus.  “Whose tail? don’t be a fool!”

Crawley.  “And it doesn’t burn!!  Oh, it burns blacker in the fire!—­Ah, ah! now the eyes have caught fire—­diamonds full of hell.  They blast!  Ah, now the teeth have caught light—­red-hot nails.  The mouth is as big as the table, gaping wider, wider, wider.  Ah! ah! ah!”

brutus. “——­ him; I won’t stay in the room with such a fellow, he makes my blood run cold.  Has he cut his father’s throat in a church, or what?”

Crawley (shrieking).  “Oh, don’t go; oh, my dear friends, don’t leave me alone with IT.  My dear friends, you sit down right upon it—­that sends it away.”  And Crawley hid his face, and pointed wildly to whereabouts they were to sit upon the phantom.

brutus.  “Come, it is gone now; was forced nearly to squash it first, though, haw! haw! haw!”

Crawley.  “Yes, it is gone.  Thank Heaven—­I’ll give up drinking.”

brutus.  “So now fork out the blunt for the turps.”

Crawley.  “No!  I will give no money toward murder—­robbery is bad enough.  Where shall we go to?” And he rose and went out, muttering something about “a little brandy.”

brutus.  “The sneak—­to fail us at the pinch.  I’ll wring his neck round.  What is this? five pounds.”

mephisto.  “Don’t you see the move? he won’t give it us, conscience forbids; but, if we are such rogues as take it, no questions asked.”