“Ah, but I have, old cock, I have. All expenses paid; and here is my five-pound note, as safe as eggs.” He tapped his pocket, in a manner quite unworthy of an experienced tout.
“Very kind of you to show us. We will have it back.” My uncle seized him by the waist, and planted him on the table. “Leave him to me, Kit. He won’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt him, if he is quiet.”
He pinned the spy’s arms with one of his, and took the note from his waistcoat pocket, while the poor man struggled vainly. Then he set him again on the floor, and said. “You should learn to be more just, my friend.”
“Highway robbery!” shouted Tonks.
“High table, you mean,” said my uncle.
“I’ll fetch the police. I’ll give you in charge. I’ll take out a warrant. I’ll—”
“You won’t do anything of the sort. Sit down, and reason quietly. You have broken contract; and if you were one of my workmen, I would pay you nothing. But as you are a poor little jackanapes, and did your best for us, I believe, until you got into this blue funk, you shall have half of this money, Tonks, to pay your way back to your proper work. But only on one condition—that you tell us what has scared you so.”
“Well,” answered Tonks very sulkily; “I always do what is fair and right. But you can’t expect a man to go with his life in his hand, to please you. Fact of it is I got into grief by following up that Migwell Bengoose, or whatever his name is. I told you that I was bound to do it, before Downy went to see him again, unless I could get any chance, you know, of seeing what was in that packet. And I got no chance at all of that, though I did my best in Bulwrag’s rooms, whenever I went to see him. But his hand, in spite of all the doctor’s work got swollen as big as a horse’s head pretty nearly; and his temper became that frightful, that I scarcely durst go nigh him, and of course there was nothing to watch, when he could scarcely get about at all. Naturally I did my best to make something out of his grumbles; but he would not have it, and at last he says, ‘Bowles, what the devil are you always after me for? It ain’t from friendly affection,’ he says, ‘and I can’t pick up anything now, you see. If you want to spy into family affairs, I’ve got one hand left,’ he says, ‘and that’s enough for you.’
“Well, that was pretty plain, you know. And worse than that, in comes the doctor, and says he will not answer for his life, unless he goes into some place where he can be properly nursed and tended. So Downy makes his mind up in two minutes, gives up his rooms in Dover Street, and goes back to Bulwrag Park, as they call it, for his mother to coddle and comfort him. And there they’ve got a hospital nurse, and a wheel-chair, and I don’t know what all; and much too grand of course for me to go near with a binocle. ‘You’d better come and see my mother, Bowles, when you want any further information,’ Downy said to me, with his frightful grin, like a yellow mangle-wuzzle, ‘ah, she does like answering questions—light and sweetness, that’s her nature!’
“So I was shut off, as you may suppose; and I pretty soon found out what made him so suspicious. He discovered somehow that I had been living, for the first week, you know, not afterwards, at good mother Wilcox’s place near by, and they look upon her as an enemy, no doubt, having been nurse to the young lady they have stolen. If you try any more watching work up there, you must not make that the head-quarters, for they keep a look-out there, you may depend. But I don’t see what more you have now to watch. The lady is out of England, you may take that for certain; most likely she is snug in some lunatic asylum, or nunnery perhaps, or monastery”—Mr. Tonks was not well versed in such matters—“either in the South of France, or somewhere on the Continent; and unless you can lay hold of Downy Bulwrag, and put him on the rack (as they do in Spain) until he squeaks out all the truth, there’s no chance of your being much the wiser. I mean, of course, unless she escapes, or comes to herself, or whatever it may be, and tells you all about it with her own lips; and that is not very likely. They know what they are about, a great deal better than you do.”