But let us return to Mr Sharp. Having, as we have said, gone to his office, he found his faithful servant Blunt there.
“Why, Blunt,” he said, sitting down at the table and tearing open a few letters that awaited him, “what a good-looking porter you make!”
“So my wife says, sir,” replied Blunt with a perfectly grave face, but with a twinkle in his eye.
“She must be a discriminating woman, Blunt. Well, what news have you to-night? You seemed to think you had found out the thieves at Gorton Station the last time we met.”
“So I have, sir, and there are more implicated than we had expected. The place is a perfect nest of them.”
“Not an uncommon state of things,” observed Mr Sharp, “for it is well-known that one black sheep spoils a flock. We must weed them all out, Blunt, and get our garden into as tidy a condition as possible; it is beginning to do us credit already, but that Gorton Station has remained too long in a bad state; we must harrow it up a little. Well, let’s hear what you have found out. They never suspected you, I suppose?”
“Never had the least suspicion,” replied Blunt with a slight approach to a smile. “I’ve lived with ’em, now, for a considerable time, and the general opinion of ’em about me is that I’m a decent enough fellow, but too slow and stupid to be trusted, so they have not, up to this time, thought me worthy of being made a confidant. However, that didn’t matter much, ’cause I managed to get round one o’ their wives at last, and she let out the whole affair—in strict confidence, of course, and as a dead secret!
“In fact I have just come from a long and interesting conversation with her. She told me that all the men at the station, with one or two exceptions, were engaged in it, and showed me two of the missing bales of cloth—the cloth, you remember, sir, of which there was such a large quantity stolen four weeks ago, and for which the company has had to pay. I find that the chief signalman, Davis, is as bad as the rest. It was his wife that gave me the information in a moment of over-confidence.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Sharp, in some surprise; “and what of Sam Natly and Garvie?”
“They’re both of ’em innocent, sir,” said Blunt. “I did suspect ’em at one time, but I have seen and heard enough to convince me that they have no hand in the business. Natly has been goin’ about the station a good deal of late, because the wife of one of the men is a friend of his wife, and used to go up to nurse her sometimes when she was ill. As to Garvie, of course he knows as well as everybody else that some of the men there must be thieves, else goods would not disappear from that station as they do, but his frequent visits there are for the purpose of reclaiming Davis, who, it seems, is an old playmate of his.”