“Now, Mr. Prescott,” Perkins said, when he had brought in the required refreshment, “I’ll leave you to talk it over with the Slogger. I’ll just go upstairs and see how things are getting on.”
“This business I want to speak to you about, Slogger, concerns Mr. Maynard and myself, and I rely upon you to do anything you can for us.”
“That I will, sir,” the man said heartily. “Mr. Maynard and you have been good friends to me, and I’m your man now. Who is it, sir? I’ll tumble against him somehow, and give him pepper. I don’t care if I get six months for it, not a snap, sir, not for you and Mr. Maynard.”
Prescott laughed.
“It is not in that line, Slogger, and if it was you know Mr. Maynard could do it for himself.”
“So he could, sir, none better; still he mightn’t like to get in the papers, you know. I hoped I might have done him a good turn.”
“So you can, Slogger, but not in that line. You know a man named Barton?”
“That I do,” the man said angrily. “He got my brother Bill transported. But I’ll be even with him some day.”
“It is about that I wanted to speak to you. Barton has been paid by Mr. Maynard’s uncle to find out something. Instead of that he has cheated him completely, and has kept some documents in his hands which are of great importance. He will now want a large sum of money to give them up. The old gentleman is so indignant that he swears he won’t pay him a penny. Now, if you have really got some pull over Barton, and can put on the screw, so as to make him give up the papers, you will do Barton as ill a turn as he has done you, you will greatly oblige us, and you will put a fifty pound note into your pocket.”
“Done it is with you, it’s a match,” the man said. “I have got what I fancy’s a pull over Barton, but I never used it before because I never saw my way. I will tell you, sir, and you can put it on as you think best. You remember I went with Perkins and Mr. Maynard and you to that Chartist meeting. My eye, what a lark that were, to be sure. Well, sir, there was a big slouching chap standing in front of me when the row began. He didn’t go in for fighting, but his hat got knocked off in the skrimmage, and a black wig he wore, and I saw his short grey hair, and knew him at once for Barton, for it was only a week before I had seen him in the witness-box against my brother. I tried to get at him to give him a remembrancer, but there were half a dozen round all busy at me at once, so I had enough to do to keep close to the others. Well, sir, not long after this, came the blow up of the whole business, and I heard it said among some chaps I knew, who were pretty deep in it, that they had been blown upon. I asked who they suspected, and they told me that it must have been one of the committee, but there were only one chap who had been on it who they didn’t know, and he weren’t nowhere to be found. He’d give out he was a joiner, and worked down Clerkenwell, but they searched every shop, and made every enquiry, and no chap like him had been heard of there. I asked about his looks, and, just as I expected, I found out it was Barton. If I’d told ’em what I thought, Barton’s life wouldn’t have been worth, no, not a day’s purchase, for a lot of ’em had sworn if they ever found out who it was they’d do for him; and I didn’t somehow like the thought of that. It ain’t English, you know, sir, nothing manly and stand-up about it—what I call a foreigneering sort of job. So I kept it dark, thinking some day if any of my pals got into a hole I could put the screw on to Barton, and make him get ’em off. There, sir, that’s all I know. What do you think of it?”