"Well, sir, it wasn't my business to think about it. I ain't in the detective line, thank God."
Faunce smoked the cigar of thoughtfulness by the coffee-room fire, went to bed at ten o'clock, and was out after an early breakfast next morning, strolling by the water between all that is left of the old city wall and the West Station. The tide was in, and the wavelets plashed gaily against the low parapet, and Faunce saw how by a false step in the darkness any one might drop into eight or nine feet of water. But then there was the medical evidence of that smashing blow on the skull. Nor could any theory of accidental drowning account for the finding of the body four miles away, battened down under a rotten boat.
Faunce spent the rest of his morning in desultory conversation with three or four men who let out boats for hire, in whose ways and customs he showed a keen interest, wanting to know the how, when, and where of their letting, and if ever they lost a boat. He discovered one case—happening late in the previous March—of a man who had had a narrow escape of losing a handsome skiff, which had been taken "off" him one afternoon by a stranger, and which had been found adrift next morning near the West Station, and never a sixpence of the day's hire did he get from that swindling rascal.
Faunce tested the boatman's memory by close questioning about the stranger's personal appearance, and with some difficulty arrived at certain broad characteristics which had impressed the man at the time of the hiring.
"There was not many people wanting boats so early in the year," he said; "but this one told me as he had a niece living at Hythe, and wanted to give her an afternoon on the water. 'It may be dark when I brings back your boat,' he says, 'but I'm an old salt, and you needn't be afraid I shall damage her.' He was a big, powerful-looking chap, and he had something of a seaman's look, so I trusted him—and that's how he tret me," concluded the boatman, resentfully.
"If you can find me the precise date of that hiring, I'll give you a sovereign for it," said Faunce.
Thus stimulated, the boatman knew he could find the date. He had a rough-and-ready ledger in which he entered most hirings, and cash received—and he had certainly noted down the loss of a day, and the way he'd been swindled.
Faunce went home with him to a queer little slum between the river and the bar gate, and did not leave him till he had a copy of the man's entry in his pocket-book.
"I may want your evidence next assizes," he said; "but if I do, you'll be paid for your time."
"Thank 'ee, sir. I knew that bloke was a bad 'un."