For indeed Jem Stickels made no secret of his admiration for the young lady, nor of his determination to “bring down the hussy’s pride some fine day.”
It was the intention of the detective to go to Shingle End, to interrogate Miss Bostal on the subject of the burn on Miss Claris’s hand. But as he felt sure that Nell would try to outwit him by seeing the lady and preparing her for his questions, he wanted to wait until she had started on her journey, so that he might be with Miss Bostal when the girl arrived.
His expectations were realized to the letter. He was waiting behind a clump of bushes not far from the garden gate of Shingle End, when he caught the first sight of the girl coming across the fields at a rapid pace. As she drew near, he could hear her panting breath, could see, even in the waning light of the December day, that she cast anxious glances round her as she went.
When she was within a couple of hundred yards of him, she stopped, with a little scream, as Jem Stickels suddenly appeared at her side, springing up from the shelter of one of the numerous dikes with which the marsh was intersected in all directions.
“LOOK HERE! YOU HAD BETTER LISTEN TO WHAT I’VE GOT TO SAY.”—See Page [129].
The detective heard the fisherman’s hoarse, jeering laugh. Then he saw the girl dart forward, with the evident intention of escaping her unwelcome admirer by fleetness of foot.
“That’s the very movement by which she got away from me!” thought the detective, as he saw the slight figure bend suddenly to the right, avoiding the rough touch with which she was threatened.
But Jem Stickels knew with whom he had to deal. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he contented himself with barring her passage with his person, skillfully baffling each attempt she made to pass him. These attempts on her side, and the successful movements by which Jem frustrated them, brought both the young people near enough to the detective in his place of concealment for him to hear the words which the fisherman addressed to the girl.
“Look here,” he said, roughly, and in no very subdued voice, “you had better listen to what I’ve got to say, and so I tell you. For if you don’t, I’ll just take myself off and say it to somebody else instead.”