“I came here to show him the way, and introduce him to the great detective,” Joson volunteered, with a sympathetic snifter and cringe.
“Yes, having been here so often yourself, you were quite qualified for that task,” I dryly returned, whereat the lame man cringed and bobbed again, and affected to take the observation as a very good joke, though his mental remarks, I feel sure, were quite unfit for publication.
“You say you have lost a bag of money,” I continued to the organ-grinder, after taking down his name as Peter McCarthy. “How did it happen, and how much money did the bag contain?”
“’Twasn’t lost—’twas stole from me,” cried the organ-grinder, with a fresh burst of expletives on the head of the robber; “and there was two hundred and seven golden sovereigns in the bag—two hundred and seven, sur. ’Twas a heap of money, and it was so pleasant to feel the gold running through your fingers. But I’m afeared I’ll never touch it again. And I worked hard for it, sur; if I’d coined every sovereign of it out of me own blood it couldn’t have been got slower. Tin years! och, if I lose it, I may creep into me grave.”
“You were foolish to carry such a large sum about with you,” I could not help observing.
“I didn’t carry it about with me—it had got too heavy for that,” quickly returned the organ-grinder. “Faith, I only wish I’d never given up carrying it, and I’d have had it now. No; I had it stowed away in a hole of the chimney of my house, where no living being could get at it.”
“And yet it was taken—how do you explain that?”
“I can’t explain it. I only know that it’s gone,” he answered with a mysterious look, much as if he thought some greedy ghosts had been at work removing his hidden pile. “My house is a garret in the Grassmarket. I’ll take you to it, and show you the place whenever you like. The landlord is a hawker called Jimmy Poulson. He has the other two rooms; but he can’t get into my place at any time, as I’ve a lock on the dure, which I had put on myself, which no one can pick.”
At the mention of Jimmy Poulson’s name, Tom Joson, the lame man, jerked his head to me significantly.
“I’ve always till now thought Jimmy an honest man,” continued the organ-grinder, “and even if he had got into my house while I was out, how could he have known I had money, or got it out without leaving marks?”