“All right, guvner, the truth’s the truth, and you shall have it. I’ve always done my duty by you, Mr. Flooks,” said the porter.
“Yes, you have been a sober steady fellow for this year past,” said Mr. Flooks.
“There’s a bill out offering a reward to discover the man as did the deed, ain’t there?”
“Yes,” said Bales.
“I knows that, ’cos I’ve read it: me and Momus read it last night, and there’s a free pardon for him as confesses who may know about it, and yet was not actually concerned in it.”
“Yes,” said Bales.
“Then here goes! The day after the murder as me and Momus were having a bit o’ dinner in at the Music-Hall Tavern at the back of the house here, a traveller comes in—a half-starved looking sort of a chap—and he sets down afore the fire. Momus, that’s my dog, sir, one of the wonderfullest animals out, sir. Momus smells at him, as if she had met him afore, and walks round him on her hind-legs. That causes me to take notice of him like. The gal comes in, and he orders some grub, and asks if there’s a fire in the other room: she says yes, and in he goes. ‘Do you know him, Momus; does yer know the gent, old gal?’ She wags her bit o’ stump, as much as to say ‘I does,’ and so does yer guvner, says I, all of a suddent; ’cos it just then flashed on me that it were my son-in-law. Yes, gents, I ain’t talking no bosh—my son-in-law, Mr. Jefferson Crawley.”
Mr. Bales pursed up his lips, and gave a low whistle at this, and could not resist making other indications of his surprise and satisfaction.
“Oh, you knows him, do yer?” said the porter. “Well, arter a bit, I goes into the room, and I sees him a reading the newspaper all about the murder, and when I goes in he drops it as though it had bitten him. ‘Don’t yer like the news, guvner,’ says I? ‘don’t you like it, son-in-law?’ He looked awful at this. He bolted with my gal ‘Chrissy,’ you know.”
The detective whistled again.