“Very well,” said the latter, folding the paper up without looking at it, and putting it into his waistcoat pocket, “if we want you, we’ll fetch you.”
“I suppose I had better put my statement down in writing?” said Samuel, making a last effort at pomposity.
“Can if you like,” said the sub-inspector, yawning, “when you’ve nothing else to do.”
And he ended the conference by calling to a constable outside to tell 190 C he might come in.
Grievously crestfallen, Samuel withdrew, bemoaning the hour when he first heard the name of Cruden, and was fool enough to dirty his hands with a “big job.” What else was he to expect when once these official snobs took a thing up? Of course they would put every obstacle and humiliation in the way of an outsider that jealousy could suggest. He had very little doubt that this sub-inspector, the moment his back was turned, would sit down and make notes of his information, and then take all the credit of it to himself. Never mind, they were bound to want him when the trial came on, and wouldn’t he just show up their tricks! Oh no! S.S. wasn’t going to be flouted and snubbed for nothing, he could tell them, and so they’d discover.
It was no use staying in Liverpool, that was clear. The Liverpool police should have the pleasure of fetching him all the way from London when they wanted him; and possibly, with Durfy’s aid, he might succeed in getting hold of another trump-card meanwhile to turn up when they least expected it.
The journey south next day was less blithe and less occupied with the Law Times than the journey north had been. But as he got farther away from inhospitable Liverpool his spirits revived, and before London was reached he was once more in imagination “the clever lawyer, Shuckleford, don’t you know, who gave the Liverpool police a slap in the face over that Agency Corporation business, don’t you know.”
Two “don’t you knows” this time!
On reaching home, any natural joy he might be expected to feel on being restored to the bosom of his family was damped by the discovery that his mother was that very moment in next door relieving guard with Miss Crisp at the bedside of Mrs Cruden.
“What business has she to do it when I told her not?” demanded Sam wrathfully of his sister.