as the other one did; not that I minded that much,” he continued; “but she couldn’t read, and she sometimes filled up the papers with arsenic for fear of being found out; and that might have been inconvenient, if we’d ever happened to sell them.”
“Now, Gus,” said Richard, as he drew his chair up to the fireplace and lit his pipe—permission being awarded by Bell, who lived in one perpetual atmosphere of tobacco-smoke—“now, Gus, I want Peters to tell you all about this affair; how it was he thought me innocent; how he hit upon the plan he formed for saving my neck; how he tried to cast about and find a clue to the real murderer; how he thought he had found a clue, and how he lost it.”
“Shall my sister stop while he tells the story?” asked Gus.
“She is your sister, Gus,” answered Richard. “She cannot be so unlike you as not to be a true and pitying friend to me. Miss Darley,” he continued, turning towards her as he spoke, “you do not think me quite so bad a fellow as the world has made me out; you would like to see me righted, and my name freed from the stain of a vile crime?”
“Mr. Marwood,” the girl answered, in an earnest voice, “I have heard your sad story again and again from my brother’s lips. Had you too been my brother, I could not, believe me, have felt a deeper interest in your fate, or a truer sorrow for your misfortunes. It needs but to look into your face, or hear your voice, to know how little you deserve the imputation that has been cast upon you.”
Richard rises and gives her his hand. No languid and lady-like pressure, such as would not brush the down off a butterfly’s wing, but an honest hearty grasp, that comes straight from the heart.
“And now for Mr. Peters’s story,” said Gus, “while I brew a jugful of whisky-punch.”
“You can follow his hands, Gus?” asks Richard.
“Every twist and turn of them. He and I had many a confab about you, old fellow, before we went out fishing,” said Gus, looking up from the pleasing occupation of peeling a lemon.
“Now for it, then,” said Richard; and Mr. Peters accordingly began.
Perhaps, considering his retiring from the Slopperton police force a great event, not to say a crisis, in his life, Mr. Peters had celebrated it by another event; and, taking the tide of his affairs at the flood, had availed himself of the water to wash his hands with. At any rate, the digital alphabet was a great deal cleaner than when, eight years ago, he spelt out the two words, “Not guilty,” in the railway carriage.
There was something very strange to a looker-on in the little party, Gus, Richard, and Bell, all with earnest eyes fixed on the active fingers of the detective—the silence only broken by some exclamation at intervals from one of the three.
“When first I see this young gent,” say the fingers, as Mr. Peters designates Richard with a jerk of his elbow, “I was a-standin’ on the other side of the way, a-waitin’ till my superior, Jinks, as was as much up to his business as a kitting,”—(Mr. Peters has rather what we may call a fancy style of orthography, and takes the final g off some words to clap it on to others, as his taste dictates)—“a-waitin,’ I say, till Jinks should want my assistance. Well, gents all—beggin’ the lady’s parding, as sits up so manly, with none of yer faintin’ nor ’steriky games, as I a’most forgot she was a lady—no sooner did I clap eyes upon Mr. Marwood here, a-smokin’ his pipe, in Jinks’s face, and a-answerin’ him sharp, and a-behavin’ what you may call altogether cocky, than I says to myself, ‘They’ve got the wrong un. My fust words and my last about this ’ere gent, was, ‘They’ve got the wrong un.’ ”
Mr. Peters looked round at the attentive party with a glance of triumph, rubbed his hands by way of a full-stop, and went on with his manual recital.
“For why?” said the fingers, interrogatively, “for why did I think as this ’ere gent was no good for this ’ere murder; for why did I think them chaps at Slopperton had got on the wrong scent? Because he was cheeky? Lor’ bless your precious eyes, miss” (by way of gallantry he addresses himself here to Isabel), “not a bit of it! When a cove goes and cuts another cove’s throat off-hand, it ain’t likely he ain’t prepared to cheek a police-officer. But when I reckoned up this young gent’s face, what was it I see? Why, as plain as I see his nose and his moustachios—and he ain’t bad off for neither of them,” said the fingers, parenthetically—“I see that he hadn’t done it. Now, a cove what’s screwed up to face a judge and jury, maybe can face ’em, and never change a line of his mug; but there isn’t a cove as lives as can stand that first tap of a detective’s hand upon his shoulder as tells him, plain as words, ‘The game is up.’ The best of ’em, and the pluckiest of ’em, drops under that. If they keeps the colour in their face—which some of ’em has got the power to do, and none as never tried it on can guess the pain—if they can do that ’ere, the perspiration breaks out wet and cold upon their for’eds, and that blows ’em. But this young gent—he was took aback, he was surprised, and he was riled, and used bad language; but his colour never changed, and he wasn’t once knocked over till Jinks, unbusiness-like, told him of his uncle’s murder, when he turned as white as that ’ere ’ed of Bon-er-part.” Mr. Peters, for want of a better comparison, glanced in the direction of a bust of the victor of Marengo, which, what with tobacco-smoke and a ferocious pair of burnt cork moustachios, was by no means the whitest object in creation.
“Now, what a detective officer’s good at, if he’s worth his salt, is this ’ere: when he sees two here and another two there, he can put ’em together, though they might be a mile apart to anybody not up to the trade, and make ’em into four. So, thinks I, the gent isn’t took aback at bein’ arrested; but he is took aback when he hears as how his uncle’s murdered. Now, if he’d committed the murder, he’d know of it; and he might sham surprise, but he wouldn’t be surprised; and this young gent was knocked all of a heap as genuine as—” Mr. Peters’s ideas still revert to the bust of Napoleon—“as ever that ’ere forring cove was, when he sees his old guard scrunched up small at the battle of Waterloo.”
“Heaven knows, Peters,” said Richard, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and looking up from his stooping position over the fire, “Heaven knows you were right; I did feel my heart turn cold when I heard of that good man’s death.”
“Well, that they’d got the wrong un I saw was as clear as daylight—but where was the right un? That was the question. Whoever committed the murder did it for the money in that ’ere cabinet: and sold agen they was, whoever they was, and didn’t get the money. Who was in the house? This young gent’s mother and the servant. I was nobody in the Gardenford force, and I was less than nobody at Slopperton; so get into that house at the Black Mill I couldn’t. This young gent was walked off to jail and I was sent about my business—my orders bein’ to be back in Gardenford that evenin’, leavin’ Slopperton by the three-thirty train. Well, I was a little cut up about this young gent; for I seed that the case was dead agen him; the money in his pocket—the blood on his sleeve—a cock-and-a-bull story of a letter of introduction, and a very evident attempt at a bolt—only enough to hang him, that’s all; and, for all that, I had a inward conwiction that he was as hinnercent of the murder as that ’ere plaster-of-Paris stattur.” Mr. Peters goes regularly to the bust for comparisons, by way of saving time and trouble in casting about for fresh ones.
“But my orders,” continued the fingers, “was positive, so I goes down to the station to start by the three-thirty; and as I walks into the station-yard, I hears the whistle, and sees the train go. I was too late; and as the next train didn’t start for near upon three hours, I thought I’d take a stroll and ’av a look at the beauties of Slopperton. Well, I strolls on, promiscuous like, till I comes to the side of a jolly dirty-looking river; and as by this time I feels a little
