t every individual item would have
graced and commended the cover of a railway novel.

Anxiety the First: Where is the Body? or, The Mystery of Bent Pitman. It
was now manifestly plain that Bent Pitman (as was to be looked for from
his ominous appellation) belonged to the darker order of the criminal
class. An honest man would not have cashed the bill; a humane man would
not have accepted in silence the tragic contents of the water-butt; a
man, who was not already up to the hilts in gore, would have lacked
the means of secretly disposing them. This process of reasoning left a
horrid image of the monster, Pitman. Doubtless he had long ago disposed
of the body--dropping it through a trapdoor in his back kitchen, Morris
supposed, with some hazy recollection of a picture in a penny dreadful;
and doubtless the man now lived in wanton splendour on the proceeds of
the bill. So far, all was peace. But with the profligate habits of a man
like Bent Pitman (who was no doubt a hunchback in the bargain), eight
hundred pounds could be easily melted in a week. When they were gone,
what would he be likely to do next? A hell-like voice in Morris's own
bosom gave the answer: 'Blackmail me.'

Anxiety the Second: The Fraud of the Tontine; or, Is my Uncle dead?
This, on which all Morris's hopes depended, was yet a question. He had
tried to bully Teena; he had tried to bribe her; and nothing came of
it. He had his moral conviction still; but you cannot blackmail a sharp
lawyer on a moral conviction. And besides, since his interview with
Michael, the idea wore a less attractive countenance. Was Michael
the man to be blackmailed? and was Morris the man to do it? Grave
considerations. 'It's not that I'm afraid of him,' Morris so far
condescended to reassure himself; 'but I must be very certain of my
ground, and the deuce of it is, I see no way. How unlike is life to
novels! I wouldn't have even begun this business in a novel, but what
I'd have met a dark, slouching fellow in the Oxford Road, who'd have
become my accomplice, and known all about how to do it, and probably
broken into Michael's house at night and found nothing but a waxwork
image; and then blackmailed or murdered me. But here, in real life, I
might walk the streets till I dropped dead, and none of the criminal
classes would look near me. Though, to be sure, there is always Pitman,'
he added thoughtfully.

Anxiety the Third: The Cottage at Browndean; or, The Underpaid
Accomplice