"Quite so," agreed Eldrick, "And you shall have your ten pounds if you can tell anything useful."
"I don't know owt about it's being useful, sir, nor what use is to be made on it," said Pickard, "but I can tell you a bit o' truth, and you can do what you like wi' what I tell. But," he went on, lowering his voice and glancing at the door by which he had just entered, "there's another name 'at 'll have to be browt in—private, like. Name, as it so happens, o' one o' your clerks—t' head clerk, I'm given to understand—Mr. Pratt."
Eldrick showed no sign of surprise. But he continued to look significantly at Byner as he turned to the landlord.
"Mr. Pratt has left me," he said. "Left me three weeks ago. So you needn't be afraid, Mr. Pickard—say anything you like."
"Oh, I didn't know," remarked Pickard. "It's not oft that I come down in t' town, and we don't hear much Barford news up our way. Well, it's this here, Mr. Eldrick—you know where my place is, of course?"
Eldrick nodded, and turned to Byner.
"I'd better explain to you," he said. "Whitcliffe is an outlying part of the town, well up the hills—a sort of wayside hamlet with a lot of our famous stone quarries in its vicinity. The Green Man, of which our friend here is the landlord, is an old-fashioned tavern by the roadside—where people are rather fond of dropping in on a Sunday, I fancy, eh, Mr. Pickard?"
"You're right, sir," replied the landlord. "It makes a nice walk out on a Sunday. And it were on a Sunday, too, 'at I got to know this here James Parrawhite as you want to know summat about. He began coming to my place of a Sunday evenin', d'ye see, gentlemen?—he'd walk across t' valley up there to Whitcliffe and stop an hour or two, enjoyin' hisself. Well, now, as you're no doubt well aweer, Mr. Eldrick, he were a reight hand at talkin', were yon Parrawhite—he'd t' gift o' t' gab reight enough, and talked well an' all. And of course him an' me, we hed bits o' conversation at times, 'cause he come to t' house reg'lar and sometimes o' week-nights an' all. An' he tell'd me 'at he'd had a deal o' experience i' racin' matters—whether it were true or not, I couldn't say, but——"
"True enough!" said Eldrick. "He had."
"Well, so he said," continued Pickard, "and he was allus tellin' me 'at he could make a pile o' brass on t' turf if he only had capital. An' i' t' end, he persuaded me to start what he called investin' money with him i' that way—i' plain language, it meant givin' him brass to put on horses 'at he said was goin' to win, d'ye understand?"