with my boat’s stretcher, or take a aim at your brains with my boat-hook. I did so on accounts of your looking too hard at what I had in tow, as if you was suspicious, and on accounts of your holding on to the gunwale of my boat.’ I says to him, ‘Gaffer, I know it.’ He says to me, ‘Rogue Riderhood, you are a man in a dozen’—I think he said in a score, but of that I am not positive, so take the lowest figure, for precious be the obligations of a Alfred David. ‘And,’ he says, ‘when your fellow-men is up, be it their lives or be it their watches, sharp is ever the word with you. Had you suspicions?’ I says, ‘Gaffer, I had; and what’s more, I have.’ He falls a shaking, and he says, ‘Of what?’ I says, ‘Of foul play.’ He falls a shaking worse, and he says, ‘There was foul play then. I done it for his money. Don’t betray me!’ Those were the words as ever he used.”
There was a silence, broken only by the fall of the ashes in the grate. An opportunity which the informer improved by smearing himself all over the head and neck and face with his drowned cap, and not at all improving his own appearance.
“What more?” asked Lightwood.
“Of him, d’ye mean, Lawyer Lightwood?”
“Of anything to the purpose.”
“Now, I’m blest if I understand you, Governors Both,” said the informer, in a creeping manner: propitiating both, though only one had spoken. “What? Ain’t that enough?”
“Did you ask him how he did it, where he did it, when he did it?”
“Far be it from me, Lawyer Lightwood! I was so troubled in my mind, that I wouldn’t have knowed more, no, not for the sum as I expect to earn from you by the sweat of my brow, twice told! I had put an end to the pardnership. I had cut the connection. I couldn’t undo what was