expecting a gentleman presently. As the gentleman was not
honourable enough to keep his engagement, he came again next day, with
his pocket-book in such a state of distention that he was regarded in
the bar as a man of large property. After that, he repeated his visits
every day, and had so much writing to do, that he made nothing of
emptying a capacious leaden inkstand in two sittings. Although he never
talked much, still, by being there among the regular customers, he made
their acquaintance, and in course of time became quite intimate with Mr
Tacker, Mr Mould's foreman; and even with Mr Mould himself, who openly
said he was a long-headed man, a dry one, a salt fish, a deep file, a
rasper; and made him the subject of many other flattering encomiums.

At the same time, too, he told the people at the Assurance Office, in
his own mysterious way, that there was something wrong (secretly wrong,
of course) in his liver, and that he feared he must put himself
under the doctor's hands. He was delivered over to Jobling upon this
representation; and though Jobling could not find out where his liver
was wrong, wrong Mr Nadgett said it was; observing that it was his
own liver, and he hoped he ought to know. Accordingly, he became Mr
Jobling's patient; and detailing his symptoms in his slow and secret
way, was in and out of that gentleman's room a dozen times a day.

As he pursued all these occupations at once; and all steadily; and all
secretly; and never slackened in his watchfulness of everything that
Mr Jonas said and did, and left unsaid and undone; it is not improbable
that they were, secretly, essential parts of some great scheme which Mr
Nadgett had on foot.

It was on the morning of this very day on which so much had happened to
Tom Pinch, that Nadgett suddenly appeared before Mr Montague's house in
Pall Mall--he always made his appearance as if he had that moment come
up a trap--when the clocks were striking nine. He rang the bell in a
covert under-handed way, as though it were a treasonable act; and passed
in at the door, the moment it was opened wide enough to receive his
body. That done, he shut it immediately with his own hands.

Mr Bailey, taking up his name without delay, returned with a request
that he would follow him into his master's chamber. The chairman of the
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Board was dressing,
and received him as a business person who was often backwards and
forwards,