"It's a lie!" he shrieked; "I am ruined! I shall never see a penny of it; you and your accomplices will fatten upon the old man's savings. Curse you all! I wish you were dead!"
"Thank you," I said; "if that's the case I shall wish you good afternoon and depart, or my accomplices will levant with my share of the spoil." I started to go in the direction of Streatham. The old fellow came to his senses at once.
"Stop a minute!" he cried; "I don't mean that. Stop and help me to recover my money."
"What, from my own accomplices?" said I. He took no notice.
"Help me to recover my money," he continued, "and to bring that rogue to the gallows, and—and you won't be sorry for it!"
"It isn't a hanging matter," I said; "but I am ready to help you if you talk like a sensible man. How much has the fellow taken?"
This was an unfortunate remark, for it instantly plunged the old man into renewed paroxysms of rage and woe. I therefore did not pursue my inquiries, but led my friend slowly towards Streatham, he spluttering and muttering his maledictions, I patiently awaiting the dawn of reason. I inquired, however, presently, whether he knew the numbers of his stolen notes, and as my companion inquired, in response, whether I took him for a fool, I concluded that he did possess this information.
The old man grew calmer after a while, and I accompanied him first to the police station, and afterwards to the telegraph office, where he wrote and despatched a wire to the manager of the Bank of England. The clerk read out his message as we stood at the counter, and I was astonished and rather shocked to learn that my new friend's loss, according to his list of notes, amounted to something very near three hundred pounds.
During the next few days my acquaintance with the strange old man ripened considerably; for together we were called upon by the police authorities to attend, at least once per diem, at the Streatham police station, in order to identify the culprit among a large assortment of suspicious characters brought up daily for our inspection. I think it was on the fifth or sixth day after the robbery that our pilgrimages to the police station were at last crowned with success, and we had the pleasure of seeing once again the unmistakable features of the rogue we were in search of, and afterwards of getting him condemned by a magistrate to a period of enforced virtue and innocence. We were, moreover, successful in recovering a portion of the stolen property, though not all of it—a circumstance which greatly pleased me, for I honestly believed that the lost three hundred pounds represented the whole of my old friend's worldly possessions, as he had led me to understand, and I had been grieved to think of the poor old fellow's sudden misfortune and ruin through the guile of a fellow-creature.
Mr. Clutterbuck, which was the old miser's name, lived in a small villa in Lower Streatham—a dingy, dull-looking house situated in the midst of a moderate garden surrounded by a high brick wall. So far as could be seen, there was no way of entering the abode excepting by a small door in the wall leading up through the square garden to the house; and though I several times, during that week of attendance at the police station and the police court, accompanied the old man home, he never once invited me within doors; neither did he ever express to me one word of thanks for the services I had rendered him in connection with the loss he had sustained and the recovery of a good portion of his property.