"And this was the day before yesterday?" asked Captain Nat.
"Yes."
Captain Nat shook his head. "If he was like that the day before yesterday," he said, "in tow with such chaps as you say,—well, whatever he had on him ain't on him now. An' it 'ud puzzle a cleverer man than me to find it. You may lay to that."
Viney swore, and stamped a foot, and swore again. "But see," he said, "ain't there a chance? It was in notes, all of it. Them chaps'll be afraid to pass notes. Couldn't most of it be got back on an arrangement to cash the rest? You can find 'em if you try, with all your chances. Come—I'll pay fair for what I get, to you an' all."
"See how you've left it," remarked Captain Nat; and Viney swore again. "This was all done the day before yesterday. Well, you don't hear of it yourself till yesterday, an' now you don't come to me till to-day."
Viney swore once more, and grinned twice as wide in his rage. "Yes," he said, "that was Blind George's doing. I sent him back to see what he could do, an' ain't seen him since. Like as not he's standing in with the others."
"Ay, that's likely," the old man answered, "very likely. Blind George is as tough a lot as any in Blue Gate, for all he's blind. You'd never ha' heard of it at all if they'd ha' greased him a bit at first. I expect they shut him out, to keep the plant to themselves; an' so he came to you for anything he could pick up. An' now——"
Viney cursed them all, and Blind George and himself together; but most he cursed Marr; and so talking, the two men walked to and fro in the passage.
I could see that Viney was angry, and growing angrier still. But I gave all my attention to the work at the fouled hawser. The man in the boat, working patiently with a boat-hook, succeeded suddenly and without warning, so that he almost pitched headlong into the river. The rope came up from its entanglement with a spring and a splash, flinging some amazing great object up with it, half out of water; and the men gave a cry as this thing lapsed heavily to the surface.