“I don’t say I think it’s anyone as yet, sir,” Mr. Grimstone answered sententiously; “but when a man as had two thousand pound upon him in banknotes is found in a wood shot through the heart, and the notes missin’—the wood bein’ free to anybody as chose to walk in it—it’s a pretty open case for suspicion. I should like to see this man Dawson, if it’s convenient.”
“Tonight?” asked John.
“Yes: the sooner the better. The less delay there is in this sort of business, the more satisfactory for all parties, with the exception of the party that’s wanted,” added the detective.
“I’ll send for Dawson, then,” answered Mr. Mellish; “but I expect he’ll have gone to bed by this time.”
“Then he can but get up again, if he has, sir,” Mr. Grimstone said politely. “I’ve set my heart upon seeing him tonight, if it’s all the same to you.”
It is not to be supposed that John Mellish was likely to object to any arrangement which might hasten, if by but a moment’s time, the hour of the discovery for which he so ardently prayed. He went straight off to the servants’ hall to make inquiries for the gardener, and left Talbot Bulstrode and the detective together.
“There ain’t nothing turned up here, I suppose, sir,” said Joseph Grimstone, addressing Mr. Bulstrode, “as will be of any help to us?”
“Yes,” Talbot answered. “We have got the numbers of the notes which Mrs. Mellish gave the murdered man. I telegraphed to Mr. Floyd’s country house, and he arrived here himself only an hour ago, bringing the list of the notes with him.”
“And an uncommon plucky thing of the old gentleman to do, beggin’ your pardon, sir,” exclaimed the detective with enthusiasm.
Five minutes afterwards, Mr. Mellish re-entered the room, bringing the gardener with him. The man had been into Doncaster to see his friends, and only returned about half an hour before; so the master of the house had caught him in the act of making havoc with a formidable cold joint, and a great jar of pickled cabbage, in the servants’ hall.
“Now, you’re not to be frightened, Dawson,” said the young squire, with friendly indiscretion; “of course nobody for a moment suspects you, any more than they suspect me; but this gentleman here wants to see you, and of course you know there’s no reason that he shouldn’t see you if he wishes it, though what he wants with you—”
Mr. Mellish stopped abruptly, arrested by a frown from Talbot Bulstrode; and the gardener, who was innocent of the faintest comprehension of his master’s meaning, pulled his hair respectfully, and shuffled nervously upon the slippery Indian matting.
“I only want to ask you a question or two to decide a wager between these two gentlemen and me, Mr. Dawson,” said the detective with reassuring familiarity. “You bought a secondhand waistcoat of Gogram, in the marketplace, didn’t you, about a year and a half ago?”
“Ay, sure, sir. I bought a weskit at Gogram’s,” answered the gardener; “but it weren’t secondhand; it were bran new.”
“A yellow stripe upon a brown ground?”
The man nodded, with his mouth wide open, in the extremity of his surprise at this London stranger’s familiarity with the details of his toilet.
“I dunno how you come to know about that weskit, sir,” he said, with a grin; “it were wore out full six months ago; for I took to wearin’ of it in t’ garden, and garden-work soon spiles anything in the way of clothes; but him as I give it to was glad enough to have it, though it was awful shabby.”
“Him as you give it to?” repeated Mr. Grimstone, not pausing to amend the sentence, in his eagerness. “You gave it away, then?”
“Yees, I gave it to th’ ‘Softy’; and wasn’t th’ poor fond chap glad to get it, that’s all!”
“The ‘Softy’!” exclaimed Mr. Grimstone. “Who’s the ‘Softy’?”
“The man we spoke of last night,” answered Talbot Bulstrode; “the man whom Mrs. Mellish found in this room upon the morning before the murder—the man called Stephen Hargraves.”
“Ay, ay, to be sure; I thought as much,” murmured the detective. “That will do, Mr. Dawson,” he added, addressing the gardener, who had shuffled a good deal nearer to the doorway in his uneasy state of mind. “Stay, though; I may as well ask you one more question. Were any of the buttons missing off that waistcoat when you gave it away?”
“Not one on ’em,” answered the gardener, decisively. “My missus is too particular for that. She’s a reg’lar toidy one, she is; allers mendin’ and patchin’; and if one of t’ buttons got loose she was sure to sew it on toight again, before it was lost.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dawson,” returned the detective, with the friendly condescension of a superior being. “Good night.”
The gardener shuffled off, very glad to be released from the awful presence of his superiors, and to go back to the cold meat and pickles in the servants’ hall.
“I think I’m bringing the business into a nutshell, sir,” said Mr. Grimstone, when the door had closed upon the gardener. “But the less said, the better, just yet awhile. I’ll take the list of the numbers of the notes, please, sir; and I believe I shall come upon you for that two hundred pound, Mr. Mellish, before either of us is many weeks older.”
So, with the list made by cautious Archibald Floyd, bestowed safely in his waistcoat-pocket, Mr. Joseph Grimstone walked back to Doncaster through the still summer’s night, intent upon the business he had undertaken.
“It looked uncommon black against the lady about a week ago,” he thought, as he walked meditatively across the dewy grass in Mellish Park; “and I fancy the information they got at the Yard would have put a fool upon the wrong scent, and kept him on it till the right one got worn out. But it’s clearing up, it’s clearing up beautiful; and
