“I'll take two thousand pounds, and go to Canada or to New York, my passage and expenses being paid, and sign anything in reason he wants; and that's the shortest chalk I'll offer.”
“Don't you wish you may get it? I do, I know, but I'm thinking you might jest as well look for the naytional debt.”
“What's your name?” again asked Davies, a little abruptly.
“My name fell out o' window and was broke, last Tuesday mornin'. But call me Tom Wheeler, if you can't talk without calling me something.”
“Well, Tom, that's the figure,” said Davies.
“If you want to deal, speak now,” said Wheeler. “If I'm to stand between you, I must have a power to close on the best offer I'm like to get. I won't do nothing in the matter else-ways.”
With this fresh exhortation, the conference on details proceeded; and when at last it closed, with something like a definite understanding, Tom Wheeler said,—“Mind, Paul Davies, I comes from no one, and I goes to no one; and I never seed you in all my days.”
“And where are you going?”
“A bit nearer the moon,” said the mysterious Mr. Wheeler, lifting his hand and pointing towards the red disk, with one of his bearded grins. And wheeling his horse suddenly, away he rode at a canter, right toward the red moon, against which for a few moments the figure of the retreating horse and man showed black and sharp, as if cut out of cardboard.
Paul Davies looked after him with his left eye screwed close, as was his custom, in shrewd rumination. Before the horseman had got very far, the moon passed under the edge of a thick cloud, and the waste was once more enveloped in total darkness. In this absolute obscurity the retreating figure was instantaneously swallowed, so that the shrewd ex-detective, who had learned by rote every article of his dress, and every button on it, and could have sworn to every mark on his horse at York Fair, had no chance of discovering in the ultimate line of his retreat, any clue to his destination. He had simply emerged from darkness, and darkness had swallowed him again.