The stranger, with a distrustful look at Hewitt, complied. At this moment, Hewitt’s clerk, Kerrett, entered from the outer office with a slip of paper. Hewitt glanced at it, and crumpled it in his hand. “I am engaged just now,” was his remark, and Kerrett vanished.
“And now,” Hewitt said, as he sat down and suddenly turned to the stranger with an intent gaze, “and now, Mr Hoker, we’ll talk of this music.”
The stranger started and frowned. “You’ve the advantage of me, sir,” he said; “you seem to know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
Hewitt smiled pleasantly. “My name,” he said, “is Hewitt—Martin Hewitt, and it is my business to know a great many things. For instance, I know that you are Mr Reuben B. Hoker, of Robertsville, Ohio.”
“MR. HOKER.”
The visitor pushed his chair back, and stared. “Well—that gits me,” he said. “You’re a pretty smart chap, anyway. I’ve heard your name before, of course. And—and so you’ve been a-studyin’ of the ‘Flitterbat Lancers,’ have you?” This with a keen glance in Hewitt’s face. “Well, well, s’pose you have. What’s your opinion?”
“Why,” answered Hewitt, still keeping his steadfast gaze on Hoker’s eyes, “I think it’s pretty late in the century to be fishing about for the Wedlake jewels, that’s all.”
These words astonished me almost as much as they did Mr Hoker. The great Wedlake jewel robbery is, as many will remember, a traditional story of the sixties. I remembered no more of it at the time than probably most men do who have at some time or another read up the causes célèbres of the century. Sir Francis Wedlake’s country house had been robbed, and the whole of Lady Wedlake’s magnificent collection of jewels stolen. A man named Shiels, a strolling musician, had been arrested and had been sentenced to a long term of penal servitude. Another man named Legg—one of the comparatively wealthy scoundrels who finance promising thefts or swindles and pocket the greater part of the proceeds—had also been punished, but only a very few of the trinkets, and those quite unimportant items, had been recovered. The great bulk of the booty was never brought to light. So much I remembered, and Hewitt’s sudden mention of the Wedlake jewels in connection with my broken window, Mr Reuben B. Hoker, and the “Flitterbat Lancers,” astonished me not a little.
As for Hoker, he did his best to hide his perturbation, but with little success. “Wedlake jewels, eh?” he said; “and—and what’s that to do with it, anyway?”