"Not the Mint—eh? Well, if you says so, it must be true—'cos you should know best. But I s'pose you won't deny that it was somewhere in Clerkenwell?"
"You're out again," returned Crankey Jem.
"The devil I am!" exclaimed Crisp, rubbing his nose. "And yet I'm a pretty good hand at a guess too. Now it isn't my wish or my dooty to pump a prisoner—but I should like to be resolved as to whether you haven't been living in the Happy Valley?"
"No," cried Jem; "and now leave me alone."
"Not the Happy Valley—eh?" proceeded the indefatigable Mr. Crisp: then, perceiving that his endeavours to find out the prisoner's place of abode were useless, he went upon another tack. "Well—it isn't my business to pump you; but I am really at a loss to think how you could have been such a fool as to go back to your old tricks and break into that house there—down yonder, I mean—you know where? Come now?"
And Mr. Crisp fixed a searching eye upon Crankey Jem's countenance.
"I tell you what it is," exclaimed the prisoner, seriously irritated at length; "you want to entrap me, if you can—but you can't. And for a very good reason too—because I haven't broken into any house at all, or done a thing I'm ashamed of since I came back to England."
With these words, Crankey Jem turned his back upon the baffled Mr. Crisp, and looked out of the window.
Almost at the same moment an inner door was thrown open, and one of the Under Secretaries for the Home Department beckoned Mr. Crisp into the adjacent room, where the principal Secretary was already seated, he having arrived by the private entrance.
Crisp remained with the Minister for about ten minutes, and then returned to the ante-room, but it was merely to conduct Henry Holford and Crankey Jem into the presence of the Home Secretary and the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street.