“Name of Pawley, eh?” I suggested.
“Never heard it, but I shouldn’t wonder if it was,” he answered. “I only heard of him. Anyway, he came—and his principal followed him—a big, pompous man, who was at Bickerdale’s yesterday. And that’s where Bickerdale and I quarrelled, see?”
“Not quite,” I replied. “How, and why, did you quarrel?”
“Because Bickerdale, for some queer reason or other, suddenly shut his mouth after that fat old party had been, and wouldn’t give me one scrap of information,” answered Mr. Weech, with a highly injured air. “Dead silence on his part, eh? Flat refusal! That was after I saw you leaving him. Ab-so-lute-ly refused to tell me one word about what was going on! Me! his son-in-law, and more than, for that’s where the shoe pinches, a pressman!”
“Ah!” I exclaimed, seeing light at last. “I see! You want to make what they call a story of it?”
“What else?” he answered, with a knowing wink. “What d’ye suppose I’m here for? I don’t believe Mr. Parslewe—I’ve heard of him, many a time—stole that blessed box—not I! But there’s romance, and mystery, and what not about the whole thing, and I want to work it up and make a live column, or a couple of ’em, out of it, and so I came to the fountainhead, and Mr. Parslewe’s away, worse luck. Now, can you tell me anything?”
We got rid of Mr. Weech by promising him faithfully that on Mr. Parslewe’s return we would tell him all that had transpired, and would entreat him to favour our visitor with his exclusive confidence, and after another whisky-and-soda, during his consumption of which he told us confidentially that he meant to Ride High, he went away, leaving us more mystified than ever.
And we were still more mystified when, during the course of that afternoon, a telegraph boy came all the way over the moors from Wooler, bringing me a message. It was, of course, from Parslewe, and, as Madrasia at once remarked, just like him.
Both of you meet me Newcastle Central Station noon to-morrow.