"I fear you won't be able to stop me," said Derrick, smiling. "On the strength of your letter I procured a search-warrant. I represent the law, you see. You should have made a bargain before you wrote the letter, Mr. Webb."
"Rogues, thieves, and liars, the lot of you," said the old man, striking the ground violently with his stick. "What about my rent?"
"I don't owe you any. Did this woman?"
"No. She's paid me up to date. But here's my cottage without a tenant. I'll find it difficult to let it again, if she was done to death as the papers said."
"We don't know that Mrs. Brand is the same woman."
"Well, Mrs. Brand hasn't been seen since the day that crime took place," retorted Webb, "and then there's the room, you know."
"Ah! I want to see the room. It is strange she should have been killed in a room similar to that occupied by herself. I can't understand it."
"If you made it worth my while I might assist you. I am poor; oh! how poor I am. Look at my clothes. You wouldn't pick them off a dunghill--not you. And I live on sausages. They're cheap, but not filling. Do you know of anything that taken at one meal would keep me going for a week?"
"No," said Derrick abruptly, and thinking the old man a queer character. "Show me the house."
"All in good time," said the ancient, hobbling to the gate. "Ah!" He wheeled round and shook his fist at a butcher's boy. "Hear that brat. Why don't you run him in for insulting language?"