John Mellish leaned against the mantelpiece, and covered his face with his hand. For any practical purpose, he might as well have been in his own room. He knew nothing of Talbot’s reason for this interview with the detective officer. He had no shadowy idea, no growing suspicion shaping itself slowly out of the confusion and obscurity, of the identity of the murderer. He only knew that his Aurora was innocent; that she had indignantly refuted his base suspicion; and that he had seen the truth, radiant as the light of inspiration, shining out of her beautiful face.
Mr. Bulstrode rang, and ordered a bottle of sherry for the delectation of the detective; and then, in a careful and businesslike manner, he recited all that he had been able to discover upon the subject of the murder. Joseph Grimstone listened very quietly, following Talbot Bulstrode with a shining track of lead-pencil hieroglyphics over the greasy paper, just as Tom Thumb strewed crumbs of bread in the forest-pathway, with a view to his homeward guidance. The detective only looked up now and then to drink a glass of sherry, and smack his lips with the quiet approval of a connoisseur. When Talbot had told all that he had to tell, Mr. Grimstone thrust the memorandum-book into a very tight breast-pocket, and taking his hat from under the chair upon which he had been seated, prepared to depart.
“If this information about the money is quite correct, sir,” he said, “I think I can see my way through the affair; that is, if we can have the numbers of the notes. I can’t stir a peg without the numbers of the notes.”
Talbot’s countenance fell. Here was a deathblow. Was it likely that Aurora, that impetuous and unbusinesslike girl, had taken the numbers of the notes, which, in utter scorn and loathing, she had flung as a last bribe to the man she hated?
“I’ll go and make inquiries of Mrs. Mellish,” he said; “but I fear it is scarcely likely I shall get the information you want.”
He left the room; but five minutes afterwards returned triumphant.
“Mrs. Mellish had the notes from her father,” he said. “Mr. Floyd took a list of the numbers before he gave his daughter the money.”
“Then if you’ll be so good as to drop Mr. Floyd a line, asking for that list by return of post, I shall know how to act,” replied the detective. “I haven’t been idle this afternoon, gentlemen, any more than you. I went back after I parted with you, Mr. Bulstrode, and had another look at the pond. I found something to pay me for my trouble.”
He took from his waistcoat-pocket a small object, which he held between his finger and thumb.
Talbot and John looked intently at this dingy object, but could make nothing out of it. It seemed to be a mere disc of rusty metal.
“It’s neither more nor less than a brass button,” the detective said, with a smile of quiet superiority; “maker’s name, Crosby, Birmingham. There’s marks upon it which seem uncommon like blood; and unless I’m very much mistaken, it’ll be found to fit pretty correct into the barrel of your pistol, Mr. Mellish. So what we’ve got to do is to find a gentleman wearin’, or havin’ in his possession, a waistcoat with buttons by Crosby, Birmingham, and one button missin’; and if we happen to find the same gentleman changin’ one of the notes that Mr. Floyd took the numbers of, I don’t think we shall be very far off layin’ our hands on the man we want.”
With which oracular speech Mr. Grimstone departed, charged with a commission to proceed forthwith to Doncaster, to order the immediate printing and circulating of a hundred bills, offering a reward of ￡200 for such information as would lead to the apprehension of the murderer of James Conyers. This reward to be given by Mr. Mellish, and to be over and above any reward offered by the Government.
XXXVII
The Brass Button by Crosby, Birmingham
Mr. Matthew Harrison and Captain Prodder were both accommodated with suitable entertainment at the sign of the Crooked Rabbit; but while the dog-fancier appeared to have ample employment in the neighbourhood—employment of a mysterious nature, which kept him on the tramp all day, and sent him home at sunset, tired and hungry, to his hostelry—the sailor, having nothing whatever to do, and a great burden of care upon his mind, found the time hang very heavily upon his hands; although, being naturally of a social and genial temper, he made himself very much at home in his strange quarters. From Mr. Harrison the captain obtained much information respecting the secret of all the sorrow that had befallen his niece. The dog-fancier had known James Conyers from his boyhood; had known his father, the “swell” coachman of a Brighton Highflyer, or Skyrocket, or Electric, and the associate of the noblemen and gentlemen of that princely era, in which it was the right thing for the youthful aristocracy to imitate the manners of Mr. Samuel Weller, senior. Matthew Harrison had known the trainer in his brief and stormy married life, and had accompanied Aurora’s first husband as a humble dependent and hanger-on in that foreign travel which had been paid for out of Archibald Floyd’s chequebook. The honest captain’s blood boiled as he heard that shameful story of treachery and extortion practised upon an ignorant schoolgirl. Oh, that he had been by to avenge those outrages upon the child of the dark-eyed sister he had loved! His rage against the undiscovered murderer of the dead man was redoubled when he remembered how comfortably James Conyers had escaped from his vengeance.
Mr. Stephen Hargraves, the “Softy,” took good care to keep out of the way of the Crooked Rabbit, having no wish to encounter Captain Prodder
