“Calling or occupation?”
Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr. Riderhood gave in the definition, “Waterside character.”
“Anything against you?” Eugene quietly put in, as he wrote.
Rather baulked, Mr. Riderhood evasively remarked, with an innocent air, that he believed the t’other Governor had asked him summa’t.
“Ever in trouble?” said Eugene.
“Once.” (Might happen to any man, Mr. Riderhood added incidentally.)
“On suspicion of—”
“Of seaman’s pocket,” said Mr. Riderhood. “Whereby I was in reality the man’s best friend, and tried to take care of him.”
“With the sweat of your brow?” asked Eugene.
“Till it poured down like rain,” said Roger Riderhood.
Eugene leaned back in his chair, and smoked with his eyes negligently turned on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing. Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer.
“Now let me be took down again,” said Riderhood, when he had turned the drowned cap over and under, and had brushed it the wrong way (if it had a right way) with his sleeve. “I give information that the man that done the Harmon Murder is Gaffer Hexam, the man that found the body. The hand of Jesse Hexam, commonly called Gaffer on the river and along shore, is the hand that done that deed. His hand and no other.”