"That I would, miss; there is not anything that I would not do if you would only set me about it."
"Well, Roberts, I am about to take you into our confidence, relying implicitly upon your silence and on your aid."
"You can do that, miss, safely enough. There is nothing now that I can do for my master; but as for Master Walter, I would walk to China if I thought that there was a chance of finding him there."
"In the first place you must remember, Roberts, that we are acting only upon suspicion; we have only that to go upon, and our object must be to find some proofs to justify those suspicions."
"I understand, miss; you have got an idea, and you want to see if it is right?"
"We ourselves have little doubt of it, Roberts. Now please sit down and listen to me, and don't interrupt me till I have finished."
Then she related the grounds that she had for suspicion that the General's death and Walter's abduction were both the work of John Simcoe, and also her own theory that this man was not the person who had saved the General's life. In spite of her warning not to interrupt, Tom Roberts' exclamations of fury were frequent and strongly worded.
"Well, miss!" he exclaimed, when she had finished and his tongue was untied, "I did not think that there was such a villain upon the face of the earth. Why, if I had suspected this I would have killed him, if I had been hung for it a week after. And to think that he regular took me in! He had always a cheerful word for me, if I happened to open the door for him. 'How are you, Tom?' he would say, 'hearty as usual?' and he would slip a crown into my hand to drink his health. I always keep an account of tips that I receive, and the first thing I do will be to add them up and see how much I have had from him, and I will hand it over to a charity. One don't like setting out to help to bring a man to the gallus when you have got his money in your pocket. I must have been a fool, miss, not to have kept a better watch, but I never thought ill of the man. It seemed to me that he had been a soldier. Sometimes when he was talking with me he would come out with barrack-room sayings, and though he never said that he had served, nor the General neither, I thought that he must have done so. He had a sort of way of carrying his shoulders which you don't often see among men who have not learned the goose-step. I will wait, miss, with your permission, until I have got rid of that money, and then if you say to me, 'Go to that man's rooms and take him by the throat and squeeze the truth out of him,' I am ready to do it."
"We shall not require such prompt measures as that, Tom; we must go about our work carefully and quietly, and I fear that it will be a very long time before we are able to collect facts that we can act upon. We have not decided yet how to begin. I may tell you that the only other person who shares our suspicions is Dr. Leeds. We think it best that even Miss Purcell should know nothing about them. It would only cause her great anxiety, and the matter will, therefore, be kept a close secret among our four selves. In a few days our plans will probably be complete, and I think that your share in the business will be to watch every movement of this man and to ascertain who are his associates; many of them, no doubt, are club men, who, of course, will be above suspicion, but it is certain that he must have had accomplices in the abduction of the child. Whether he visits them or they visit him, is a point to find out. There is little chance of their calling during daylight, and it is in the evening that you will have to keep a close eye on him and ascertain who his visitors are."
"All right, miss, I wish he did not know me by sight; but I expect that I can get some sort of a disguise so that he won't recognize me."