“Look here, Miss Nell!” said he, in argumentative tone, “do you really dare me to do that? Come, you know as I shouldn’t have dared to have spoken to you so open if I hadn’t got proof positive. Now, come, should I? Why, your face told as how you knowed I knowed, and so what’s the good of braving me? And knowing what I know, isn’t it plain I mean no harm, when I could easy earn a pound or two out of peachin’ to the detective chap? Come, now, you must see it, eh?”
“Come and say it out, then, before witnesses—I dare you to do it!” retorted Nell, with a little more assurance as she noted the man’s reluctance to take this step.
“No, I shan’t!” he replied, sullenly. “I shall go to work my own way. And I say this: if you choose to speak civil to me, I don’t ask for much more, and to ask me in to tea with you and your uncle just how you asked the young swells as were down here three months back, why, I hold my tongue, and it’ll go no farther than you and me. But if you don’t choose to do this—”
“I don’t choose!” retorted Nell, quite fiercely. “I tell you the whole story you tell is absurd, and that nobody would believe you for a moment, and you can tell it to whom you please.”
And she suddenly sprang away from Jem, and gaining the road with rapid steps, walked quickly in the direction of Shingle End.
“All right!” shouted Jem, threateningly, in stentorian tones, as he kept pace with her, walking towards the colonel’s house by the fields, as she went by the road. “But if you’ll take my advice, you’ll make a clean breast of it to your grand friends, and see if they don’t say you’d best keep in with me!”
As he shouted the last words, Jem Stickels passed the spot where the detective was in hiding. Within a few moments the latter took the opportunity of issuing from his uncomfortable shelter, and, following Jem at a quick pace, came up with him before he reached the fence which surrounded the colonel’s garden.
“Is that you, Stickels?” asked he, as if he were not quite certain of his man. “Here, I want to have a word with you!”
He spoke in a low voice, not wishing to be heard by Nell, who had now got some little way ahead, still walking along the high road. But Jem, who did wish to be heard, bawled out his answer at the very top of his voice:
“Yes, Mr. Hemming, it’s me right enough. And maybe I’ve got as much to tell you as you’ve got to ask me, sir!”