The hue and cry for the missing George Smith might be raised, but what of that? Who would connect George Smith, the humble clerk who lodged at Duck’s, with George Heritage, Squire Heritage’s son and heir?
CHAPTER XXVI.
PECULIAR BEHAVIOUR OF MR. SETH PREENE.
Mr. Seth Preene, the amateur detective, hurrying along on his mission of love and mercy, chuckled to himself at the ease with which he had accomplished his purpose.
‘He is a green un,’ he said to himself; ‘grass ain’t in it with him. I wonder where old Brooks picked him up. He’s a gentleman, though—genuine goods—hall marked. Nothing o’ the Brummagem nine-carat there.’
Mr. Seth Preene had had a good deal of experience among ‘swells,’ both of the nine-carat Brummagem and of the eighteen-carat hall-marked, in the course of his adventurous career, and it hadn’t taken him long to sum up George Heritage’s character. ‘Swell out o’ luck, I should fancy,’ he said, as he walked along.
Bess was sitting in the window, sewing, when a hansom cab rattled up to the door, and a tall dark gentleman, with a hook nose, ran up the steps and knocked.
‘How awkward!’ she exclaimed. ‘Here’s a visitor and Miss Duck’s out. I shall have to open the door.’
Bess had all a country girl’s fear of opening the door to London strangers. She had heard such tales and read such things in the newspapers about robberies and murders, that she saw a possible petty-larcenist in every tax-collector and a would-be assassin in every well-dressed person who came to inquire if Mr. Jones or Mr. Brown was an inmate of the house.
But not having heard or read of robbers and murderers dashing up in hansom cabs, with a ready-made witness in the driver, Bess summoned up courage to answer the door to this visitor.
Is Mrs. Smith within?’ asked the gentleman politely.