“And in which you an’ me met some little time back,” said the Captain, nudging him.
Cripps led the way upstairs, and ushered them into the same room in which the meeting had been held not so long before. Carefully shutting the door, he motioned to them to be seated, and stood looking at them curiously, and waiting for them to speak.
“A day or two since,” began Madge, speaking with much eagerness, and looking straight at the Doctor, “I paid you a large sum for certain information concerning Mr. Dandy Chater——”
“’Ullo!” broke in the Captain, staring from one to the other. “I asks yer pardon, Miss—but I ’adn’t no idea, w’en I took yer in tow, as you was acquainted with my ole friend Phil.”
She looked at him in perplexity. “Nor am I,” she said slowly. “I spoke of Mr. Dandy Chater, who has been recaptured, and is to stand his trial to-morrow for murder.”
“Dandy Chater is the false flag as ’e’s bin a sailin’ under,” replied the Captain. “But, anyways—call ’im Dandy Chater, or Phil Crowdy—or Phil Chater—’e’s my pal, and I’m beatin’ up these ’ere quarters for to find ’im.”
Again there flashed through Madge’s mind the words the Doctor had spoken, about the one man living, and the other dead; again there seemed to ring in her ears the words of Ogledon, when he had confessed to her that he had killed Dandy Chater. Yet that same Dandy Chater had stood—alive and well—in the hut by the river; that same Dandy Chater was now on his way to Chelmsford Jail!
“He said to-night,” she said, turning to Cripps—“that I must find you—that you could save him. I have heard that the trial will be held to-morrow. Won’t you help me; won’t you tell me something more than you told the other day? Think in what a state of mind I am now left! The one man has been murdered; the other, of whom you spoke, is either Dandy Chater, or a total stranger to me. How am I to find out?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but the Captain suddenly raised his hand, and checked him. “Avast!” he said hoarsely—“I’ve got the bearings of this ’ere business—an’ I’ve got it from Phil ’isself. An’ if so be as this ’ere young lady ’ll bear with me, she shall ’ave the straight of it. Dandy Chater—own twin brother to my pal Philip Crowdy, or Philip Chater—was took out of the river by this ’ere gent an’ myself a while back. I ’ad my reasons fer sayin’ nothink, an’ I cut an’ run.”
“I, too, had my reasons,” said Cripps, in a low voice—“for I feared Ogledon, and my own connection with him, and I suspected that Ogledon had killed him.”