"Oh, but we are," said he, readily; "it's a wonderfully advanced town is Reading—you won't get much in Regent Street which is not here. I've lived in Reading all my life—and seen changes, sir, indeed I have!"
"You know most of the people then?" said I, with a purpose.
"Ay," said he, "I've born and buried a many, so to speak; seen children grow to men and women, and men and women grow to children—you wouldn't think it perhaps!"
"No," said I, "you don't show it; but your reputation, if I may say so, goes beyond this place. I was in Pangbourne yesterday, where a tall, yellow-haired man was speaking of you; who is he, I wonder?"
"A tall, yellow-haired man!" he exclaimed, putting his finger in the center of his forehead as if in aid of memory; "I didn't know there were such in Reading. A tall, yellow—let me see, now——"
"You sold him some tabloids of nitro-glycerine; perhaps that will help to his identification?" said I.
"Ah, now I know you're wrong," said he; "there's only one man within five miles of here who uses that stuff, and he hasn't got yellow hair—ha, ha, he hasn't got any at all."
"Who is he?" I asked with growing curiosity.
"Why, old Jabez Ladd, the miser, out at Yore Park; he takes that stuff for his heart, sir. Wonderful weak heart he has, too; but he hasn't got yellow hair—no, I may say with conviction that he has no hair at all."
I had learnt all I needed, for the mere mention of the name Jabez Ladd was sufficient for me. At the man's words a whole freshet of ideas seemed to rush to my mind. I had known the miser for years as one of the hardest jewel buyers in the country; I had sold him thousands of pounds' worth of stuff; I had heard the strangest traditions of his astounding meanness and self-denial. They even said that he forbade himself a candle after dusk, and that his fare was oatmeal and brown bread; while he lived in a house which would not have been a poor retreat for a millionaire. This I knew, but the words of the apothecary had made other things clear to me—one, that the yellow-haired man had got his emeralds in a box which must have come from Ladd's house, since he alone in the neighborhood took tabloids of nitro-glycerine; another, that the man's very shabbiness and obvious shuffling pointed very strongly to the conclusion that he should be watched.