told me with his own lips that he done the deed. What’s more, he said that he done the deed. And I’ll swear it!”
“Where did he tell you so?”
“Outside,” replied Riderhood, always beating it out, with his head determinedly set askew, and his eyes watchfully dividing their attention between his two auditors, “outside the door of the Six Jolly Fellowships, towards a quarter after twelve o’clock at midnight—but I will not in my conscience undertake to swear to so fine a matter as five minutes—on the night when he picked up the body. The Six Jolly Fellowships won’t run away. If it turns out that he warn’t at the Six Jolly Fellowships that night at midnight, I’m a liar.”
“What did he say?”
“I’ll tell you (take me down, t’other Governor, I ask no better). He come out first; I come out last. I might be a minute arter him; I might be half a minute, I might be a quarter of a minute; I cannot swear to that, and therefore I won’t. That’s knowing the obligations of a Alfred David, ain’t it?”
“Go on.”
“I found him a waiting to speak to me. He says to me, ‘Rogue Riderhood’—for that’s the name I’m mostly called by—not for any meaning in it, for meaning it has none, but because of its being similar to Roger.”
“Never mind that.”
“ ’Scuse me , Lawyer Lightwood, it’s a part of the truth, and as such I do mind it, and I must mind it and I will mind it. ‘Rogue Riderhood,’ he says, ‘words passed betwixt us on the river tonight.’ Which they had; ask his daughter! ‘I threatened you,’ he says, ‘to chop you over the fingers