“Why not? He had a bottle of whiskey with him which he kept sucking at. At last he got half screwy, and when all was over he said he would have a snooze by the fire and pull himself together a bit before going home.”
Kester said no more, but going up to the hut, opened the door and went in. On the pallet at the farther end lay the dead woman, her body faintly outlined through the sheet that had been drawn over her. A clear fire was burning in the broken grate, and close to it, on the only chair in the place, sat a man fast asleep. His hands were grimy, his linen was yellow, his hair was frowsy. He was a big bulky man, with a coarse, hard face, and was dressed in faded threadbare black. He had a wooden leg, which just now was thrust out towards the fire, and seemed as if it were basking in the comfortable blaze.
On the chimney-piece was an empty spirit-bottle, and in a corner near at hand were deposited a broad-brimmed hat, greasy and much the worse for wear, and a formidable looking walking-stick.
Such was the vision of loveliness that met the gaze of Kester St. George as he paused for a moment or two just inside the cottage door. Then he coughed and advanced a step or two. As he did so the man suddenly opened his eyes, got up quickly but awkwardly out of his chair, and laid his hand on something that was hidden in an inner pocket of his coat. “No, you don’t!” he cried, with a wave of his hand. “No, you don’t! None of your hanky-panky tricks here. They won’t go down with Jack Skeggs, so you needn’t try ’em on!”
Kester stared at him in unconcealed disgust. It was evident that he was still under the partial influence of what he had been drinking.
“Who are you, sir, and what are you doing here?” asked Kester, sternly.
“I am John Skeggs, Esquire, attorney-at-law, at your service. And who may you be, when you’re at home? But there—I know who you are well enough. You are Mr. Kester St. George, of Park Newton. I have seen you before. I saw you on the day of the murder trial. You were one of the witnesses, and white enough you looked. Anybody who had a good look at you in the box that day would never be likely to forget your face again.”
Kester turned aside for a moment to hide the sudden nervous twitching of his lips.
“I’m sorry the whiskey is done,” said Mr. Skeggs with a regretful look at the empty bottle. “I should like you and I to have had a drain together. I suppose you don’t do anything in this line?” From one pocket he produced an old clasp knife, and from the other a cake of leaf tobacco. Then he cut himself a plug and put it into his mouth. “When one friend fails me, then I fall back upon another,” he said. “When I can’t get whiskey I must have tobacco.”
There was no better known character in Duxley than Mr. Skeggs. “Dirty Jack,” or “Drunken Jack,” were the sobriquets by which he was generally known, and neither of those terms was applied to him without good and sufficient reason. There could be no doubt as to the man’s shrewdness, ability, and knowledge of common law. He was a great favourite among the lower and the very lowest classes of Duxley society, who in their legal difficulties never thought of employing any other lawyer than Skeggs, the universal belief being that if anybody could pull them through, either by hook or crook, Dirty Jack was that man. And it is quite possible that Mr. Skeggs’s clients were not far wrong in their belief.