The Adventures of Oliver Twist

Fagin walked towards his home, intent upon the thoughts that were working within his brain.  He had conceived the idea—not from what had just passed though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by degrees—that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker's brutality, had conceived an attachment for some new friend.  Her altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference to the interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous, and, added to these, her desperate impatience to leave home that night at a particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him at least, almost matter of certainty.  The object of this new liking was not among his myrmidons.  He would be a valuable acquisition with such an assistant as Nancy, and must (thus Fagin argued) be secured without delay.

There was another, and a darker object, to be gained.  Sikes knew too much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less, because the wounds were hidden.  The girl must know, well, that if she shook him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely wreaked—to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life—on the object of her more recent fancy.

'With a little persuasion,' thought Fagin, 'what more likely than that she would consent to poison him?  Women have done such things, and worse, to secure the same object before now.  There would be the dangerous villain:  the man I hate:  gone; another secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime to back it, unlimited.'

These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short time he sat alone, in the housebreaker's room; and with them uppermost in his thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded him, of sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting.  There was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to understand his meaning.  The girl clearly comprehended it.  Her glance at parting showed THAT.

But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. 'How,' thought Fagin, as he crept homeward, 'can I increase my influence with her?  what new power can I acquire?'

Such brains are fertile in expedients.  If, without extracting a confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Sikes (of whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs, could he not secure her compliance?

'I can,' said Fagin, almost aloud.  'She durst not refuse me then.  Not for her life, not for her life!  I have it all.  The means are ready, and shall be set to work.  I shall have you yet!'

He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards the spot where he had left the bolder villian; and went on his way:  busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment, which he wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.

CHAPTER XLV NOAH CLAYPOLE IS EMPLOYED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION

The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.

'Bolter,' said Fagin, drawing up a chair and seating himself opposite Morris Bolter.

'Well, here I am,' returned Noah.  'What's the matter?  Don't yer ask me to do anything till I have done eating. That's a great fault in this place.  Yer never get time enough over yer meals.'

'You can talk as you eat, can't you?' said Fagin, cursing his dear young friend's greediness from the very bottom of his heart.

'Oh yes, I can talk.  I get on better when I talk,' said Noah, cutting a monstrous slice of bread.  'Where's Charlotte?'

'Out,' said Fagin.  'I sent her out this morning with the other young woman, because I wanted us to be alone.'

'Oh!' said Noah.  'I wish yer'd ordered her to make some buttered toast first.  Well.  Talk away.  Yer won't interrupt me.'

There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him, as he had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great deal of business.

'You did well yesterday, my dear,' said Fagin.  'Beautiful!  Six shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day!  The kinchin lay will be a fortune to you.'

'Don't you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can,' said Mr. Bolter.

'No, no, my dear.  The pint-pots were great strokes of genius: but the milk-can was a perfect masterpiece.'

'Pretty well, I think, for a beginner,' remarked Mr. Bolter complacently.  'The pots I took off airy railings, and the milk-can was standing by itself outside a public-house.  I thought it might get rusty with the rain, or catch cold, yer know.  Eh?  Ha! ha! ha!'