"He is willing to do so," the reporter answered. "I was to have fetched them away to-night."
"You may be a little late," Mannering remarked.
The double entente in his tone did not escape Ronaldson's notice. He stopped short on the pavement.
"So you have bought him," he remarked.
Mannering glanced at him superciliously.
"Will you pardon me," he said, "if I remark that this conversation has no particular interest for me? Don't let me bring you any further out of your way."
Ronaldson took off his hat.
"Very good, sir," he remarked. "I will wish you good-night!"
Mannering pursued his way homeward with the briefest of farewells. The young reporter retraced his steps. Arrived at Parkins's lodgings he mounted the stairs, and found the room empty. He returned and interviewed the landlord. From him he only learned that Parkins had departed with one of two gentlemen who had come to see him that evening, and that they had paid his rent for him. The reporter was obliged to depart with no more satisfactory information. But next morning, before nine o'clock, he was waiting to see Mannering, and would not be denied. He was accompanied, too, by a person of no less importance than the editor of the Yorkshire Herald himself.
Mannering kept them waiting an hour, and then received them coolly.