e wicked plan could never be found out.
Flintwinch, however, wishing for his own purposes to keep her in his
power, deceived her. He cunningly put in its place a worthless piece of
paper, and this Mrs. Clennam burned instead. Flintwinch then locked up
the real piece in an iron box, with a lot of private letters that had
been written by the poor crazed singer to Mrs. Clennam, begging her
forgiveness. The box he gave to his brother, who took it to Holland with
him for safe-keeping.

But Flintwinch, in this deception, overreached himself.

There was an adventurer in Holland named Rigaud, who used to drink and
smoke with this brother. He was an oily villain, who had been in jail in
France on suspicion of having murdered his wife. He had shaggy dry hair
streaked with red, and a thick mustache, and when he smiled his eyes
went close together, his mustache went up under his hooked nose, and his
nose came down over his mustache. Rigaud saw the box, concluded it
contained something valuable, and made up his mind to get it. His chance
came when the brother of Flintwinch died suddenly one day, and he lost
no time in making away with the iron box.

By means of the letters it contained, he soon guessed the secret which
Mrs. Clennam had been for so many years at such pains to conceal, and,
deciding that by this knowledge he could squeeze money out of her, he
came to London to find and threaten her.

But she, believing she had burned the part of the will which Rigaud
claimed to possess, refused to listen to him, until at last, maddened by
her refusals, he searched out the Dorrits.

He soon discovered that the man who had educated the singer (Arthur's
real mother) was Frederick Dorrit, Little Dorrit's dead uncle, and that
it was Little Dorrit herself, since she was his youngest niece, from
whom the money was now being unjustly kept.

Rigaud easily found Little Dorrit, for she was now in the Marshalsea
nursing Arthur, where he lay sick, and to her the cunning adventurer
sent a copy of the paper in a sealed packet, asking her, if it was not
reclaimed before the prison closed that same night, to open and read it
herself.

He then went to the Clennam house, told Mrs. Clennam and Flintwinch what
he had done and demanded money at once as the price of his reclaiming
the packet before Little Dorrit should learn the secret it held.

At this Flintwinch had to confess what he had done, and Mrs. Clennam
knew that the fatal paper had not b