“I quite agree with you—it is scandalous,” returned Shearman; “but how is it to be remedied?”
“Ah—that’s another question, and one I shall perhaps not find it easy to answer; but that some remedy must be applied is, in my opinion, beyond all question. Why, within the last few years you have suffered a host of assassins of the very worst type to slip through your fingers. What am I saying?—that’s not precisely my meaning, for you have never laid hold of them at all. Now, there was that case at Brompton-Edith-grove or Maude-grove—I forget which. The two Wallaces, after the death of the ill-fated woman, betook themselves to a cab, were driven off, and not the faintest clue has been found to either of them. Is that not so?”
Mr. Cartridge shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I am afraid it is.”
“I’m sure of it. Wal, such things ought not to be. What is the inference? I say again, what is the inference?”
“Can’t tell.”
“I can—bribery and corruption. You won’t make me believe that they would have been all this time at large unless, like Kurr and Benson, they had closed the eyes of the police with gold-dust. What say you, sir?”
This last observation was addressed to Peace, who by this time had begun to be in a little bit of a quandary, for he felt that it was an act of great imprudence to continue in the company of his two associates much longer, but he did not very well know how to bring the interview to an end without exciting suspicion.
“I quite agree with you, sir,” he returned.
Then, thinking to change the subject, which was to him by no means an agreeable one, he drew from his pocket again the drawing of his invention for raising sunken ships.
“It would be indeed a favour if either of you gentlemen could put me in the way of laying this draft of my invention before the proper authorities.”