“Fred Wright?”
“No.”
“Give us yer twenty pun’ then. I’m on. I don’t care the price of ’arf a pint about none of the others.”
“Not so fast, my friend; you’ve got to earn the money before you get it. And it’ll depend on yourself whether it’s ten, fifteen or twenty. Now listen to me. What I want you to do is to make an excuse for me to stay in your shop, so as to get a look at the people who come for letters. You must pretend to engage me as your assistant, and fix me up in a white apron, and so on. If any one asks questions you can say I’m a young man who’s come into a little money and wants to drop it in starting a hairdressing establishment, and I’ve come to you to help me do it. You can tell them that you don’t let me cut any of your regular customers, but that I make myself useful by stropping the razors, lathering the ‘shaves,’ and practising hair-cutting on odd customers and schoolboys. I could do that much, I think, without betraying myself. The sooner we begin the better. Give me a white apron, if you’ve got one to spare, and I’ll put it on straight off. Here’s five pounds down to start with, and I’ll give you another five for every week I’m here. Is it a bargain?”
“No, it ain’t. Ten pun’ down, and ten pun’ a week’s my figger, and no less. I ain’t a-going to injure my business by taking hamitoors to learn the business on my customers out of charity. Them’s my terms. Yer can take ’em or leave ’em, as yer like.”
In the end we compounded the matter for ten pounds down and five pounds weekly, and having arrayed myself in a white apron and a canvas coat, braided red, which the Professor tossed me from a drawer, I assumed those badges of office—the shears, shaving-brush and comb—and took my place behind the second operating chair to await customers and developments.
CHAPTER XIX
“ARE THERE ANY LETTERS FOR HENRY JEANES, PLEASE?”
Were it not that they have no immediate connection with my story, I should like to describe here some of the curious and amusing experiences which befell me while I was acting as assistant to a barber and betting agent. But in a narrative like the present it is perhaps best that I should confine myself to the incidents and adventures which have direct bearing upon my search for Captain Shannon.
That the Professor would betray me to his clients I did not think at all likely, as to do so would necessitate his admitting to them that he had been bribed to allow a spy, if not a detective, to enter his service under a disguise, and to have access to the correspondence of the establishment. At the same time, I did not think it advisable—at all events for the present—to take him into my confidence by telling him who was the object of my search. Hence I had to pursue my investigations in a more or less indirect manner, inquiring first about one of the parties for whom letters came and then about another, and so getting an opportunity to refer to Jeanes without appearing to be more curious about him than about the others. In reply to my casual question as to who Jeanes was, the Professor replied, with apparent indifference, that the party in question was young and good-looking, and that he did not suppose the correspondence which was being carried on meant any more than a foolish love-affair.
Several days went by, and the letter for Jeanes still remained uncalled for, until one afternoon the Professor asked me, as he had asked me on previous occasions, if I would keep an eye to the shop while he ran over the way to get half-a-pint. I nodded assent, and, promising that he would not be long, he disappeared down the stairs, only to return immediately afterwards for his pipe, which was lying on the mantel-shelf. As he passed the rack he took the letters down and ran through them as if to see how many there were, and then giving me a look, which I took to mean that it would be no use my tampering with them in his absence, he again descended the stairs in search of the desired refreshment.