“Did you indeed?” said Mistress Ivy evasively. “You seem mighty interested in other folks’ affairs,” and she looked at him rather suspiciously.
This put Master Nathaniel on his mettle. “Now, hark’ee, Mistress Ivy, I’m sure your father took a pleasure in looking at a fine crop, even if it was in another man’s field, and that your husband liked good seamanship …”
And here he had to break off his dissertation and listen, which he did very patiently, to a series of reminiscences about the tastes and habits of her late husband.
“Well, as I was saying,” he went on, when she paused for a moment to sigh, and smile and wipe her eyes with the corner of her apron, “what the sight of a field filled to the brim with golden wheat was to your father, and that of a ship skilfully piloted into harbour was to your husband, the sight of Justice crouching and springing on her prey is to me. I’m a bachelor, and I’ve managed to put by a comfortable little nest-egg, and there’s nothing I’d like to spend it on better than in preventing Justice being balked of her lawful prey, not to mention helping to avenge a fine fellow like your father. We old bachelors, you know, have our hobbies … they’re quieter about the house than a crowd of brats, but they’re sometimes quite as expensive,” and he chuckled and rubbed his hands.
He was thoroughly enjoying himself, and seemed actually to have become the shrewd, honest, and somewhat bloodthirsty old fellow he had created. His eyes shone with the light of fanaticism when he spoke of Justice, the tiger; and he could picture the snug little house he lived in in Lud—it had a little garden gay with flowers, and a tiny lawn, and espalier fruit trees, to the care of which he dedicated his leisure hours. And he had a dog, and a canary, and an old housekeeper. Probably, when he got home tonight, he would sit down to a supper of sausages and mashed, followed by a toasted cheese. And then, when he had finished his supper, he would get out his collection of patibulary treasures, and over a bowl of negus finger lovingly the various bits of gallows rope, the bloodstained glove of a murdered strumpet, the piece of amber worn as a charm by a notorious brigand chief, and gloat over the stealthy steps of his pet tiger, the Law. Yes, his obscure little life was as gay with hobbies as his garden was with flowers. How comfortable were other men’s shoes!
“Well, if what you mean,” said Mistress Ivy, “is that you’d like to help punish wicked people, why, I wouldn’t mind lending a hand myself. All the same,” and again she looked at him suspiciously, “what makes you think my father didn’t come by a natural death?”
“My nose, good lady, my nose!” and, as he spoke, he laid a knowing finger alongside the said organ. “I smelt blood. Didn’t it say in the trial that the corpse bled?”
She bridled, and cried scornfully, “And you, to be town-bred, too, and an educated man from the look of you, to go believing that vulgar talk! You know what country people are, setting everything that happens to the tunes of old songs. It was two drops of blood when the story was told in the tavern at Swan, and by the time it had reached Moongrass it was a gallon. I walked past the corpse with the others, and I can’t say I noticed any blood—but, then, my eyes were all swelled with crying. All the same, it’s what made Pugwalker leave the country.”
“Indeed?” cried Master Nathaniel, and his voice was very eager.
“Yes. My stepmother was never the kind to be saucy with—though I had no cause to love her, I must say she looked like a queen, but he was a foreigner and a little bit of a chap, and the boys in the village and all round gave him no peace, jumping out at him from behind hedges and chasing him down the street, shouting, ‘Who made the corpse of Farmer Gibberty bleed?’ and suchlike. And he just couldn’t stand it, and slipped off one night, and I never thought to see him again. But I’ve seen him in the streets of Lud, and not long ago too—though he didn’t see me.”
Master Nathaniel’s heart was thumping with excitement. “What is he like?” he asked breathlessly.
“Oh! very like what he was as a young man. They say there’s nothing keeps you young like a good conscience!” and she laughed drily. “Not that he was ever much to look at—squat and tubby and freckled, and such saucy prying eyes!”
Master Nathaniel could contain himself no longer, and in a voice hoarse with excitement he cried, “Was it … do you mean the Lud doctor, Endymion Leer?”
Mistress Ivy pursed up her mouth and nodded meaningfully.
“Yes, that’s what he calls himself now … and many folks set such store by him as a doctor, that, to hear them talk, one would think a baby wasn’t properly born unless he’d brought it into the world, nor a man properly dead unless he’d closed his eyes.”
“Yes, yes. But are you sure he is the same as Christopher Pugwalker? Could you swear to him in court?” cried Master Nathaniel eagerly.
Mistress Ivy looked puzzled. “What good would it do to swear at him?” she asked doubtfully. “I must say I never held with foul language in a woman’s mouth, nor did my poor Peppercorn—for all that he was a sailor.”
“No, no!” cried Master Nathaniel impatiently, and proceeded to explain to her the meaning of the expression. She dimpled a little at her own blunder, and then said guardedly, “And what would bring me into the law courts,
