On the next morning Melmotte was up before eight. As yet no policeman had called for him, nor had any official intimation reached him that an accusation was to be brought against him. On coming down from his bedroom he at once went into the back-parlour on the ground floor, which Mr Longestaffe called his study, and which Mr Melmotte had used since he had been in Mr Longestaffe's house for the work which he did at home. He would be there often early in the morning, and often late at night after Lord Alfred had left him. There were two heavy desk-tables in the room, furnished with drawers down to the ground. One of these the owner of the house had kept locked for his own purposes. When the bargain for the temporary letting of the house had been made, Mr Melmotte and Mr Longestaffe were close friends. Terms for the purchase of Pickering had just been made, and no cause for suspicion had as yet arisen. Everything between the two gentlemen had been managed with the greatest ease. Oh dear, yes! Mr Longestaffe could come whenever he pleased. He, Melmotte, always left the house at ten and never returned till six. The ladies would never enter that room. The servants were to regard Mr Longestaffe quite as master of the house as far as that room was concerned. If Mr Longestaffe could spare it, Mr Melmotte would take the key of one of the tables. The matter was arranged very pleasantly.
Mr Melmotte on entering the room bolted the door, and then, sitting at his own table, took certain papers out of the drawers,--a bundle of letters and another of small documents. From these, with very little examination, he took three or four,--two or three perhaps from each. These he tore into very small fragments and burned the bits,--holding them over a gas-burner and letting the ashes fall into a large china plate. Then he blew the ashes into the yard through the open window. This he did to all these documents but one. This one he put bit by bit into his mouth, chewing the paper into a pulp till he swallowed it. When he had done this, and had re-locked his own drawers, he walked across to the other table, Mr Longestaffe's table, and pulled the handle of one of the drawers. It opened;--and then, without touching the contents, he again closed it. He then knelt down and examined the lock, and the hole above into which the bolt of the lock ran. Having done this he again closed the drawer, drew back the bolt of the door, and, seating himself at his own desk, rang the bell which was close to hand. The servant found him writing letters after his usual hurried fashion, and was told that he was ready for breakfast. He always breakfasted alone with a heap of newspapers around him, and so he did on this day. He soon found the paragraph alluding to himself in the 'Pulpit,' and read it without a quiver in his face or the slightest change in his colour. There was no one to see him now,--but he was acting under a resolve that at no moment, either when alone, or in a crowd, or when suddenly called upon for words,--not even when the policemen with their first hints of arrest should come upon him,-- would he betray himself by the working of a single muscle, or the loss of a drop of blood from his heart. He would go through it, always armed, without a sign of shrinking. It had to be done, and he would do it.