“Things is come to a pretty pass,” growled Mr. Riderhood, rising to his feet, goaded to stand at bay, “when bullyers as is wearing dead men’s clothes, and bullyers as is armed with dead men’s knives, is to come into the houses of honest live men, getting their livings by the sweats of their brows, and is to make these here sort of charges with no rhyme and no reason, neither the one nor yet the other! Why should I have had my suspicions of him?”
“Because you knew him,” replied the man; “because you had been one with him, and knew his real character under a fair outside; because on the night which you had afterwards reason to believe to be the very night of the murder, he came in here, within an hour of his having left his ship in the docks, and asked you in what lodgings he could find room. Was there no stranger with him?”
“I’ll take my world-without-end everlasting Alfred David that you warn’t with him,” answered Riderhood. “You talk big, you do, but things look pretty black against yourself, to my thinking. You charge again’ me that George Radfoot got lost sight of, and was no more thought of. What’s that for a sailor? Why there’s fifty such, out of sight and out of mind, ten times as long as him—through entering in different names, re-shipping when the out’ard voyage is made, and whatnot—a turning up to light every day about here, and no matter made of it. Ask my daughter. You could go on Poll Parroting enough with her, when I warn’t come in: Poll Parrot a little with her on this pint. You and your suspicions of my suspicions of him! What are my suspicions of you? You tell me George Radfoot got killed. I ask you who done it and how you know it. You carry his knife and you wear his coat. I ask you how you come by ’em? Hand over that there bottle!” Here Mr. Riderhood appeared to labour under a virtuous delusion that it was his own property. “And you,” he added, turning to his daughter, as he filled the footless glass, “if it warn’t wasting good sherry wine on you, I’d chuck this at you, for Poll Parroting with this man. It’s along of Poll Parroting that suchlike as him gets their suspicions, whereas I gets mine by argueyment, and being nat’rally a honest man, and sweating away at the brow as a honest man ought.” Here he filled the footless goblet again, and stood chewing one half of its contents and looking down into the other as he slowly rolled the wine about in the glass; while Pleasant, whose sympathetic hair had come down on her being apostrophised, rearranged it, much in the style of the tail of a horse when proceeding to market to be sold.
“Well? Have you finished?” asked the strange man.
“No,” said Riderhood, “I ain’t. Far from it. Now then! I want to know how George Radfoot come by his death, and how you come by his kit?”
“If you ever do know, you won’t know now.”
“And next I want to know,” proceeded Riderhood, “whether you mean to charge that what-you-may-call-it-murder—”
“Harmon murder, father,” suggested Pleasant.
“No Poll Parroting!” he vociferated, in return. “Keep your mouth shut!—I want to know, you sir, whether you charge that there crime on George Radfoot?”
“If you ever do know, you won’t know now.”
“Perhaps you done it yourself?” said Riderhood, with a threatening action.
“I alone know,” returned the man, sternly shaking his head, “the mysteries of that crime. I alone know that your trumped-up story cannot possibly be true. I alone know that it must be altogether false, and that you must know it to be altogether false. I come here tonight to tell you so much of what I know, and no more.”
Mr. Riderhood, with his crooked eye upon his visitor, meditated for some moments, and then refilled his glass, and tipped the contents down his throat in three tips.
“Shut the shop-door!” he then said to his daughter, putting the glass suddenly down. “And turn the key and stand by it! If you know all this, you sir,” getting, as he spoke, between the visitor and the door, “why han’t you gone to Lawyer Lightwood?”
“That, also, is alone known to myself,” was the cool answer.
“Don’t you know that, if you didn’t do the deed, what you say you could tell is worth from five to ten thousand pound?” asked Riderhood.
“I know it very well, and when I claim the money you shall share it.”
The honest man paused, and drew a little nearer to the visitor, and a little further from the door.
“I know it,” repeated the man, quietly, “as well as I know that you and George Radfoot were one together in more than one dark business; and as well as I know that you, Roger Riderhood, conspired against an innocent man for blood-money; and as well as I know that I can—and that I swear I will!—give you up on both scores, and be the proof against you in my own person, if you defy me!”
“Father!” cried Pleasant, from the door. “Don’t defy him! Give way to him! Don’t get into more trouble, father!”
“Will you leave off a Poll Parroting, I ask you?” cried Mr. Riderhood, half beside himself between the two. Then, propitiatingly and crawlingly: “You sir! You han’t said what you want of me. Is it fair, is it worthy of yourself, to talk of my defying you afore ever you say what you want of me?”
“I don’t want much,” said the man. “This accusation of yours must not be left half made and half unmade. What was done for the blood-money must be thoroughly undone.”
“Well; but Shipmate—”
“Don’t call me Shipmate,” said the man.
“Captain, then,” urged Mr. Riderhood; “there! You won’t object to Captain. It’s a honourable title, and you fully look it. Captain! Ain’t the man dead? Now I ask you fair. Ain’t Gaffer dead?”
“Well,” returned
