"Quartern o' rum," gasped Mr. Higgins.
"When we've finished our confab you shall have it, and another one or two on the top of it as we go along. Lord bless you, Mr. Higgins, I'm not an ill-natured chap, if you take me easy, and I have the credit of generally being freehanded when I'm not interfered with. Pull yourself together, and listen to what more I've got to say. What we want to do--the secret service, the detectives, the Criminal Investigation Department, and all of us--is to keep this matter as quiet as possible till the thieves and murderers are nabbed. We're working on the strict q.t., and we've got something up our sleeve, I can tell you. And I'll tell you something more. If any outsider interferes with our game by blabbing about ropes and grapnels it will be the worst day's work he
has ever done, and he'll live to rue it. We'll wipe him out, that's what we'll do. We'll have no mercy on him."
This was the finishing stroke. Mr. Higgins lay helpless at the foot of the conqueror.
"I made a mistake," he whined. "Quartern o' rum."
"You would sell your own mother for drink, I believe."
"No, no," protested Mr. Higgins, feebly, "not so bad as that, not so bad as that. Good for my liver. Keeps me alive."
"A nice state your liver must be in," said Dick, laughing. "I think we understand each other. Take up the paste pot, and carry it steady. You shall be paid for your day's work. Tenpence an hour, so look sharp."
Mr. Higgins, completely subdued, had his fourth quartern at the bar, and shortly afterwards the British public had the privilege of seeing Dick Remington stick up the murder bills, assisted by an old man in skull cap and list slippers, in that stage of palsy from his recent experiences that his course was marked by a dribble of paste spilt from the pot he carried in his trembling hands. At every fresh stoppage a crowd gathered, arguing, disputing, airing theories. These chiefly consisted of conjectures as to who the murderer was, how the murder had been committed, how many were in it, who the man was who had been seen by Dr. Pye coming out of the house in Catchpole Square at three in the morning, whether he was the same man who had imposed upon Lady Wharton, how the blood-stained marks of footsteps on the floor were to be accounted for, whether there was any chance of the jewels being recovered, and so on, and so on. At one place there was a conversation of a different nature.
"What I find fault with in that there bill," said an onlooker, a man with a forbidding face, dressed in corduroy, "is that no pardon is offered to any accomplice as didn't actually commit that there murder. Where's the indoocement to peach on a pal, that's what I want to know?"
"A white-livered skunk I'd call him whatever his name might be," remarked a second speaker. "Honour among thieves, that's what I say."