“Who are you, my lad?”
“Ostler at the Barley Sheaf in Malthouse Lane. You’re on? Right. I see, you’re a gentleman. Well, your chap come in ’bout eleven last night on an empty dray from Chester. He had four sacks of corn with him.”
“Oh, but that can’t be the man!” Clement exclaimed, his face falling.
“You listen, mister. He had four sacks of corn with him, and wagoner, he’d bargained to carry him to Manchester. But they had quarrelled, and t’other chucked off his sacks in our yard, and there was pretty nigh a fight. Wagoner he went off and left him cursing, and he offered me a shilling to find him a lift to Manchester first thing i’ the morning. ’Bout daylight there come in a hay-cart, but driver’d only take the man and not the forage. Howsumdever, he said at last he’d take one sack, and your chap up and asked me would I take care of t’other three till he sent for ’em. I see he was mighty keen to get on, and I sez, ‘No,’ sez I, ‘but I’ll buy ’em cheap.’ ‘Right,’ sez he, and surprising little bones about it, and lets me have ’em cheap! So thinks I, who’s this as chucks away money, and as he climbed up I managed to knock off his tile and see his eye was painted, and he the very spot of your bill! I’d half a mind to stop him, but he was over-weight for me—I’m a little chap—and I let him go.’ He added some details which satisfied Clement that the traveller was really Thomas.
“Did you hear where he was going to in Manchester?”
“Five pound, mister!” The man held out his grimy paw.
Clement did not like the cunning in the bleary eyes, but he had gone so far that he could hardly draw back. He counted out four one-pound notes. “Now then?” he said, showing the fifth, but keeping a firm hold on it.
“The lad that took him is Jerry Stott—of the Apple-Tree Inn in Fennel Street. You go to him, mister. One of these will do it.”
Clement gave him the other note. “He didn’t tell you where he was going?”
“He very particlar did not. But I’m thinking you’ll net him at Jerry’s. Do you take one of Nadin’s boys. He’s a desperate-looking chap. He gave you that punch in the face, I guess?” with interest.