“And what sort of a man is this McGregor?” he asked hastily, putting his suspicion into shape. “What age? What height? What kind of a person to look at?”
“Wull, he’s a vine upstandin’ zart of a gentleman,” the landlord answered glibly in his own dialect; “as proper a gentleman as you’d wish to zee in a day’s march; med be about your height, zur, or a trifle more, has his moustaches curled round zame as if it med be a bellick’s harns; an’ a strange zart o’ a look about his eyes, too, as if ur could zee right drew an’ drew ‘ee.”
“That’s him!” Guy exclaimed, with a start, in profound excitement. “That’s the fellow, sure enough. I know him. I know him. And where is he now, landlord? Is he in the house? Can I see him?”
“Well, no, ‘ee can’t zee him, zur,” the landlord answered, eyeing the stranger askance; “he be out, jest at present. He do go vur a walk, mostly, down yonner in the bottom alongside the brook. Mebbe if you was to vollow by river-bank you med come up wi’ him by-an’-by ... and mebbe, agin, you medn’t.”
“I’ll follow him,” Guy exclaimed, growing more excited than ever, now this quarry was almost well within sight; “I’ll follow him till I find him, the confounded rascal. I’ll follow him to his grave. He shan’t get away from me.”
The landlord looked at him with a dubious frown. That one could smile and smile and be a villain didn’t enter into his simple rustic philosophy.
“He’s a pleasant-spoken gentleman is Maister McGregor,” the honest Devonian said, with a tinge of disapprobation in his thick voice. “What vur do ‘ee want to vind ‘un? That’s what I wants to know. He don’t look like one as did ever hurt a vlea. Such a soft zart of a voice. An’ he do play on the viddle that beautiful—that beautiful, why, ‘tis the zame if he war a angel from heaven. Viddler Moore, he wur up here wi’ his music last night; an’ Maister McGregor, he took the instrument vrom un, an’ ‘Let ME have a try, my vrend,’ says he, all modest and unassoomin’; and vi’ that, he wounded it up, an’ he begun to play. Lard, how he did play. Never heard nothing like it in all my barn days. It is the zame, vor all the world, as you do hear they viddler chaps that plays by themselves in the Albert Hall up to London. Depend upon it, zur, there ain’t no harm in HIM. A vullow as can play on the viddle like thik there, why, he couldn’t do no hurt, not to child nor chicken.”
Guy turned away from the door, fretting and fuming inwardly. He knew better than that. Nevitt’s consummate mastery of his chosen instrument was but of a piece, after all, with the way he could play on all the world, as on a familiar gamut. It was the very skill of the man that made him so dangerous and so devilish. Guy felt that under the spell of Nevitt’s eye he himself was but as clay in the hands of the potter.
But Nevitt should never so trick him and twist him again. To that his mind was now fully made up. He would never let that cold eye hold him fixed as of yore by its steely glance. Once for all, Nevitt had proved his power too well. Guy would take good care he never subjected himself in future to that uncanny influence. One forgery was enough. Henceforth he was adamant.
And yet? And yet he was going to seek out Nevitt; going to stand face to face with that smiling villain again; going to tax him with his crime; going to ask him what he meant by this double-dyed treachery.