“Ask, indeed!” returned the other. “Catch me asking at large about a man I mean to drop on! Such jobs must be done on the quiet—or not at all.”
The peculiar intonation of the last phrase touched the nape of Schomberg's neck with a chill. He cleared his throat slightly and looked away as though he had heard something indelicate. Then, with a jump as it were:
“Of course he didn't tell me. Is it likely? But haven't I got eyes? Haven't I got my common sense to tell me? I can see through people. By the same token, he called on the Tesmans. Why did he call on the Tesmans two days running, eh? You don't know? You can't tell?”
He waited complacently till Ricardo had finished swearing quite openly at him for a confounded chatterer, and then went on:
“A fellow doesn't go to a counting-house in business hours for a chat about the weather, two days running. Then why? To close his account with them one day, and to get his money out the next! Clear, what?”
Ricardo, with his trick of looking one way and moving another approached Schomberg slowly.
“To get his money?” he purred.
“Gewiss,” snapped Schomberg with impatient superiority. “What else? That is, only the money he had with the Tesmans. What he has buried or put away on the island, devil only knows. When you think of the lot of hard cash that passed through that man's hands, for wages and stores and all that—and he's just a cunning thief, I tell you.” Ricardo's hard stare discomposed the hotel-keeper, and he added in an embarrassed tone: “I mean a common, sneaking thief—no account at all. And he calls himself a Swedish baron, too! Tfui!”
“He's a baron, is he? That foreign nobility ain't much,” commented Mr. Ricardo seriously. “And then what? He hung about here!”
“Yes, he hung about,” said Schomberg, making a wry mouth. “He—hung about. That's it. Hung—”