“Ah!” said Mr Stubbs, “if I could do that everything would be easy, wouldn’t it? But this here murdering cove has been evading of the law for two years and more.”
“But how could he evade you, who must, I know, be a clever man, for two years?”
Mr Stubbs began to think rather well of Eustacie, French though she might be. “That’s it,” he said. “You’ve put your finger on it, missy, as the saying is. If they’d had me on to him at the start p’raps he wouldn’t have done no evading.”
“No, I think not, indeed. You look very cold, which is not at all a thing to wonder at when one considers that there is a great courant d’air here. I will take you into the parlour, where it is altogether cosy, and procure for you a glass of cognac.”
Mr Stubbs’s eye glistened a little, but he shook his head. “It’s very kind of you, miss, but I’ve a fancy to stay right where I am, d’ye see? You don’t happen to be staying in this here inn, do you?”
“But certainly I am staying here!” responded Eustacie. “I am staying with Sir Hugh Thane, who is a Justice of the Peace, and with Miss Thane.”
“You are?” said Mr Stubbs. “Well now, that’s a very fortunate circumstance, that is. You don’t happen to have seen anything of a young cove—a mighty flash young cove—Lurking?”
Eustacie looked rather bewildered, and said: “ Plait-il? Lurking?”
“Or skulking?” suggested Mr Stubbs. He drew forth from his pocket a well-worn notebook, and, licking his thumb, began to turn over its pages.
“What is that?” asked Eustacie, eyeing the book with misgiving.