In the immediate neighborhood, even, the houses were few and far between, and the surrounding country was rough and hilly, interspersed with farms and wide stretches of woodland.[{42}]
As the lawyer alighted from the train a short, thickset man approached him. His grim face was not prepossessing, and he was clad in a rough, gray suit, with his pants tucked in at the top of a pair of heavy cowhide boots, which were soiled with mud.
“Be you Mr. French?” he asked bluntly, peering sharply at the lawyer from under his bushy brows.
“Yes,” was the reply. “Who are you?”
“I’m Darbage, sir—Joe Darbage;” and now the fellow touched his woolen cap. “I’m the stablehand up to the house, yonder, and Mr. Thorpe sent me down here to get you. He said you might come by this train. Bad business, this, sir!”
“I see,” nodded the lawyer, who had not recognized the fellow as Moore’s groom and gardener. “Will there be room for my clerk, also?”
“Aye, sir, I reckon so. Tumble in, and I’ll squat in the middle.”
With no observable interest in the bumpkin, who did not quite impress him as a thoroughbred countryman, Sheridan Keene followed the lawyer into the wagon and suffered Mr. Darbage to squeeze his broad hips between them.
“I’d ’a’ come with the carryall if I’d knowed there were two o’ you,” he explained, with a side glance at the face of the detective. “Get up! G’lang!”
“I brought a clerk, thinking I might need him,” said Mr. French, as the vehicle rattled over the rough road.