At the young man’s persuasion, he now went to lie down, giving up in a weary vacant manner the effort to recollect where the man had been about to take him. He tried once to recall the names, till Harry felt a dread of delirium setting in, and it was only by his promising to follow up the clue that had been freshly opened out, that he kept the afflicted father to his couch.
Once more alone, Harry rang for Stiff, who, however, could only repeat what he had before said, and his querist was puzzled as to what should be the next steps taken.
The problem was solved by the waterside man himself, who came, he said, to see if the gentleman was well enough to go now.
“He turned ill in the cab, did he not?” said Clayton.
“Yes, sir; would go in a cab, he would. I don’t like ’em—ready to choke yer, they are; but he wouldn’t come on a ’bus. ’Fore we’d gone far, he turns as white as his hankychy, and shuts his eyes curus like, and gets all nohow in what he was a saying; but he says, he does, ‘Take me back, and come agen.’ So I brought him back, and now I’ve comed agen.”
“And now, what is your news?” said Harry. “The gentleman has placed it in my hands.”
The man looked curiously at him for a few minutes, and then rubbed the bridge of his nose with a rough hand.
“But you see, sir, this is a matter o’ offring rewards for some one as is missing, and I’ve got a mate in this here job. For, you know, as soon as ever there’s a notice up o’ that sort, my mate and I begins to look out, so as to try if we can’t find what’s missing, and get what’s offered. Now, I ask your parding, sir, but I should like to know who you may be, and what you’ve got to do with it at all? S’pose I leads you to it, shall we get the ready?”
“You may deal with me precisely as you did with the gentleman you saw before. You know for yourself that he is too ill to leave the house, and he has deputed me to act for him, as I told you.”
“True for you, sir—I did see it; and as you seem to be a gent as is all right, let’s go.”