"That is excellent," cried Mr. Gerard; "you could not mistake him for any other man in London."
"He is not in London, sir," observed the runner dogmatically. "If he were mixing with the lot that he used to be amongst, I should surely have heard of it; and if he is with people much beneath him in station, I should have learned it still more certainly. As for that, however, he is not one—if I remember him right—to hide himself, or work much underground."
"If you mean that he would not stoop to deception, Mr. Townshend," remarked my tutor gravely, "I am afraid you are mistaken; the very money which, as I have said, he obtained from me upon the day of his disappearance, was dishonourably come by. His pretext of the Methodists having bidden for a piece of ground upon which to build a chapel within the Park, and almost opposite the Rectory, was, I have since discovered, entirely false; and I cannot but fear that some judgment has overtaken this unhappy man."
Here, I am sorry to say, that Mr. Clint and Mr. Gerard looked at one another in rather a comic manner, and the Bow Street runner helped himself to a glass of the particular with an open chuckle.
"Well, sir," responded that gentleman, "you see Judgments isn't much in my way. When I catches a chap, he generally knows its judgment and execution too; but barring that, I doubt whether there is much of a special Providence for rascals—even when they rob a Church minister. Not, of course, that I am saying Sir Massingberd Heath, baronet, is a rascal, or anything like it; I never had anything to do with him in all my life before this, and that's a good sign, look you. When I said he was not a man to work underground, however, I did not mean that he would not employ every ingenious device—and the one you mention was one of the neatest I ever heard on—to procure money, but that he is of too domineering and masterful a nature to lurk and spy about. The young gentleman here need not be in much alarm, I think, of his relative's turning up in Harley Street; notwithstanding which, he is a very ticklish customer, no doubt, and one as I should not have been in the least surprised to find myself under orders to fit with a pair of bracelets, for such a thing, for instance, as murder."
I think each of us started and looked at one another in hushed amazement at this statement; and the wine-glass which Marmaduke was twisting nervously in his fingers, rattled against the table in spite of his efforts to remain calm.
"I mean," observed Mr. Townshend, in explanation, "as the baronet, when I knew him at least, was venomous, yet likewise hasty; and though cunning enough, if his temper got the better of him, would do imprudent things, I remember him well-nigh killing his jockey on the course at Doncaster—it was the second year as ever the Leger was ran for—and all for no fault of his, but just because he didn't win when his master expected it. I remember how the crowd hissed the gentleman, and the ugly look which he gave them in reply. There was no fuss made about the matter afterwards; but Sir Massingberd had to supply a deal of Golden Ointment to the poor lad's bruises: he was very free-handed with his money at that time. I suppose, by the pace he was then going, that he has not much left."
"He has almost literally not a shilling," replied Mr. Long. "I am quite certain that he had no ready-money in his possession besides the twenty one-pound notes which he obtained from me upon that evening."
"And no means of raising any?" inquired Mr. Townshend.
"None whatever," replied my tutor positively.