The informant summoned up his resolution.
“Cash down—on the spot, guv’nor?” he asked.
“Spot cash,” replied Triffitt. “On this table!”
“Well—how would a couple o’ fivers be, now?” asked the anxious one. “It’s good stuff, guv’nor.”
“A couple of fivers will do,” answered Triffitt. “And here they are.” He took two brand-new, crackling five-pound notes from his pocket, folded them up, laid them on the table, and set a glass on them. “Now, then!” he said. “Tell your tale—there’s your money when it’s told.”
The taxi-cab driver eyed the notes, edged his chair further into the half-lighted corner in which Triffitt and Carver sat, and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“All right, guv’nor,” he said. “Thanking you. Then it’s this here—the man what I drove that morning was the nephew!”
“You mean Mr. Barthorpe Herapath?” said Triffitt, also in a whisper.
“That’s him—that’s the identical, sir! Of course,” continued the informant, “I didn’t know nothing of that when I told the old gent in Portman Square what I did tell him. Now, you see, I wasn’t called at that inquest down there at Kensington—after what I’d told the old gent, I expected to be, but I wasn’t. All the same, there’s been a deal of talk around about the corner of Orchard Street, and, of course, there is them in that quarter as knows all the parties concerned, and this man Barthorpe, as you call him, was pointed out to me as the nephew—nephew to him as was murdered that night. And then, of course, I knew it was him as I took up at two o’clock that morning.”
“How did you know?” asked Triffitt.