"I won't get up," he thought; "I'll sham asleep for a bit, and see whether they happen to talk about the business."
There were only three men in the room. One of them was the landlord, whom Samuel Prodder had seen reading in the bar; and the other two were shabby-looking men, with by no means too respectable a stamp either upon their persons or their manners. One of them wore a velveteen cut-away coat with big brass buttons, knee-breeches, blue stockings, and highlows. The other was a pale-faced man, with mutton-chop whiskers, and dressed in a shabby-genteel costume, that gave indication of general vagabondage rather than of any particular occupation.
They were talking of horses when Captain Prodder awoke, and the sailor lay for some time listening to a jargon that was utterly unintelligible to him. The men talked of Lord Zetland's lot, of Lord Glasgow's lot, and the Leger and the Cup, and made offers to bet with each other, and quarrelled about the terms, and never came to an agreement, in a manner that was utterly bewildering to poor Samuel; but he waited patiently, still feigning to be asleep, and not in any way disturbed by the men, who did not condescend to take any notice of him.
"They'll talk of the other business presently," he thought; "they're safe to talk of it."
Mr. Prodder was right.
After discussing the conflicting merits of half the horses in the racing calendar, the three men abandoned the fascinating subject; and the landlord re-entering the room after having left it to fetch a fresh supply of beer for his guests, asked if either of them had heard if anything new had turned up about that business at Mellish Park.
"There's a letter in to-day's 'Guardian,'" he added, before receiving any reply to his question, "and a pretty strong one. It tries to fix the murder upon some one in the house, but it don't exactly name the party. It wouldn't be safe to do that yet awhile, I suppose."
Upon the request of the two men, the landlord of the Crooked Rabbit read the letter in the Manchester daily paper. It was a very clever letter, and a spirited one, giving a synopsis of the proceedings at the inquest, and commenting very severely upon the manner in which that investigation had been conducted. Mr. Prodder quailed until the Windsor chairs trembled beneath him as the landlord read one passage, in which it was remarked that the stranger who carried the news of the murder to the house of the victim's employer, the man who had heard the report of the pistol, and had been chiefly instrumental in the finding of the body, had not been forthcoming at the inquest.
"He had disappeared mysteriously and abruptly, and no efforts were made to find him," wrote the correspondent of the 'Guardian.' "What assurance can be given for the safety of any man's life when such a crime as the Mellish Park murder is investigated in this loose and indifferent manner? The catastrophe occurred within the boundary of the Park fence. Let it be discovered whether any person in the Mellish household had a motive for the destruction of James Conyers. The man was a stranger to the neighbourhood. He was not likely, therefore, to have made enemies outside the boundary of his employer's estate, but he may have had some secret foe within that limit. Who was he? where did he come from? what were his antecedents and associations? Let each one of these questions be fully sifted, let a cordon be drawn round the house, and every creature living in it be held under the surveillance of the law until patient investigation has done its work, and such evidence has been collected as must lead to the detection of the guilty person."
To this effect was the letter which the landlord read in a loud and didactic manner, that was very imposing, though not without a few stumbles over some hard words, and a good deal of slapdash jumping at others.