"You don't show your usual acuteness, Mr. Quirk," replied Gammon, blandly. "It is to make waste paper of that confounded conveyance which he executed, and which Mr. Aubrey doubtless has, and with which he may, at a stroke, cut the ground from under our feet!"
"The very thought makes one feel quite funny—don't it, Gammon?" quoth Quirk, with a flustered air.
"It may well do so, Mr. Quirk. Now we are fairly embarked in a cause where success will be attended with so many splendid results, Mr. Quirk—though I'm sure you'll always bear me out in saying how very unwilling I was to take advantage of the villany of that miscreant Steg—hem"——
"Gammon, Gammon, you're always harking back to that—I'm tired of hearing on't!" interrupted Quirk, angrily, but with an embarrassed air.
"Well, now we're in it," said Gammon, with a sigh, and shrugging his shoulders, "I don't see why we should allow ourselves to be baffled by trifles. The plain question is, undoubtedly, whether we are to stand still—or go on." Mr. Quirk gazed at Mr. Gammon with an anxious and puzzled look.
"How d'ye make out—in a legal way, you know, Gammon—when a man died—I mean, of a natural death?" somewhat mysteriously inquired Quirk, who was familiar enough with the means of proving the exact hour of certain violent deaths at Debtor's Door.
"Oh! there are various methods of doing so, my dear sir," replied Gammon, carelessly. "Entries in family Bibles and prayer-books—registers—tombstones—ay, by the way, an old tombstone," continued Gammon, musingly, "that would settle the business!"
"An old tombstone!" echoed Quirk, briskly, but suddenly dropping his voice. "Lord, Gammon, so it would! That's an idea!—I call that a decided idea, Gammon. 'Twould be the very thing!"
"The very thing!" repeated Gammon, pointedly. They remained silent for some moments.
"Snap could not have looked about him sharply enough when he was down at Yatton—could he, Gammon?" at length observed Quirk, in a low tone, flushing all over as he uttered the last words, and felt Gammon's cold gray eye settled on him like that of a snake.