The detective saw that Nell, who was now at the corner of the road, and about to turn to go up to the front door of the house, stopped, hesitated, and seemed half-inclined to return to where Jem stood.
Perceiving this, Jem drew back a step, and appeared to wait for her. But Nell did not come back. After a few moments of indecision, she disappeared round the corner of the white house. Jem Stickels, however, seemed either to have changed his mind about telling the detective what he knew or to have only meant to frighten the girl by pretending that he was going to do so; for instead of speaking again to Hemming, he jumped over the fence into the garden, and, running at full speed across the now bare flower-beds, flattened his nose against the window of the kitchen, where a light was burning.
By moving a few paces to the left, the detective, from where he stood outside the fence, could see that there were figures moving inside the kitchen, and could presently distinguish the two figures within as those of Nell and Miss Bostal respectively. He could see, also, although he could hear nothing, that Nell was pouring out some narrative in an excited manner, and that the elder lady was quietly listening.
“Ah! ah! ah!”
The hoarse sound of Jem Stickels’s derisive laughter suddenly startled the two ladies, who sprang apart and glanced at the window.
“Ah! ah! ah!” roared the young fisherman again.
The detective was on the point of leaping the fence, with the intention of addressing Jem, when the back door of the house was suddenly opened, and Miss Bostal, well muffled up in a thick woolen shawl, so that only her little, thin pinched nose and gentle light eyes could be seen, addressed the fisherman in kindly tones from out of the woolly depths of her covering.
“Jem Stickels, is that you? What are you doing out there, frightening us out of our lives? If you have anything to say to us, come inside.”
But the lady’s voice, kindly yet imperious, seemed to render the surly young fellow somewhat abashed. He would have slunk away and got back over the fence into the field again, but that there was a tone of command in the prim little lady’s voice which made him pause.
“I haven’t got nothin’ to say to neither of you,” grumbled he, sullenly. “Who said as I had? I haven’t said nothin’ to nobody, barrin’ just this: That I don’t see why Miss in there should treat me as if I was dirt, and that if she goes on treatin’ me that way, I’ve got the means of being even with her.”