Mr. Mellish stopped abruptly, arrested by a frown from Talbot Bulstrode; and the gardener, who was innocent of the faintest comprehension of his master's meaning, pulled his hair respectfully, and shuffled nervously upon the slippery Indian matting.
"I only want to ask you a question or two to decide a wager between these two gentlemen and me, Mr. Dawson," said the detective with reassuring familiarity. "You bought a second-hand waistcoat of Gogram, in the market-place, didn't you, about a year and a half ago?"
"Ay, sure, sir. I bought a weskit at Gogram's," answered the gardener; "but it weren't second-hand; it were bran new."
"A yellow stripe upon a brown ground?"
The man nodded, with his mouth wide open, in the extremity of his surprise at this London stranger's familiarity with the details of his toilet.
"I dunno how you come to know about that weskit, sir," he said, with a grin; "it were wore out full six months ago; for I took to wearin' of it in t' garden, and garden-work soon spiles anything in the way of clothes; but him as I give it to was glad enough to have it, though it was awful shabby."
"Him as you give it to?" repeated Mr. Grimstone, not pausing to amend the sentence, in his eagerness. "You gave it away, then?"
"Yees, I gave it to th' 'Softy;' and wasn't th' poor fond chap glad to get it, that's all!"
"The 'Softy'!" exclaimed Mr. Grimstone. "Who's the 'Softy'?"
"The man we spoke of last night," answered Talbot Bulstrode; "the man whom Mrs. Mellish found in this room upon the morning before the murder,—the man called Stephen Hargraves."