The clue, as he thought it was, led him to Wargrove, where he obtained useful information from Mr. Beecot, who gave it with a very bad grace, and offered remarks about his son's being mixed up in the case, which made Hurd, who had taken a fancy to the young fellow, protest. From Wargrove, Hurd went to Stowley, in Buckinghamshire, and interviewed the pawnbroker whose assistant had wrongfully sold the brooch to Beecot many years before. There he learned a fact which sent him back to Mr. Jabez Pash in London.
"I says, sir," said Hurd, when again in the lawyer's private room, "that nautical gentleman of yours pawned that opal serpent twenty years ago more or less."
"Never," said the monkey, screwing up his face and chewing.
"Yes, indeed. The pawnbroker is an old man, but he remembers the customer quite well, and his description, allowing for the time that has elapsed, answers to the man who tried to get the jewels from you."
Mr. Pash chewed meditatively, and then inflated his cheeks. "Pooh," he said, "twenty years is a long time. A man then, and a man now, would be quite different."
"Some people never change," said Hurd, quietly. "You have not changed much, I suspect."
"No," cackled the lawyer, rather amused. "I grew old young, and have never altered my looks."
"Well, this nautical gentleman may be the same. He pawned the article under the name of David Green—a feigned one, I suspect."
"Then you think he is guilty?"