“Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where Bucket took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted with the name, I can help you to it. It’s Tulkinghorn. That’s what it is.”
Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.
“Tulkinghorn. That’s the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow.”
Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is.
“What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?”
“I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally, what kind of man?”
“Why, then I’ll tell you, sir,” returns the trooper, stopping short and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face fires and flushes all over; “he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man—by George!—that has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That’s the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!”
“I am sorry,” says Allan, “to have touched so sore a place.”
“Sore?” The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. “It’s no fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me. He is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant seesaw. He won’t hold off, and he won’t come on. If I have a payment to make him, or time to ask him for,