“It’ll be in gold,” he said to Baldwin, as he sat down in the spare chair and half filled his glass with whisky and water. “Gold tells no tales and leaves no traces, but it had best be banked sharp.”
Baldwin looked up stupidly.
“Who’re you learning their business?” he asked savagely. “Do you think I was born in a frost?”
“Of course not,” returned Inman humbly, for he was not to be caught off his guard this time; “but it’s a lot o’ money to have lying about in cash, and I should be easier in my mind to know it was banked before I went to Hull.”
Baldwin consigned man and gold to an entirely different port and Inman refrained from further recommendations.
During the night winter got a grip of the moor, and when morning came the ground was hard and there was the promise of snow. A bitter wind was blowing from the north, and Inman listened to its weird piping with feelings of annoyance and apprehension that revealed themselves in an air of thoughtfulness and a puckered brow.
“Confound it all!” he muttered as he turned away from the window and went downstairs.
There was no one in the kitchen and after he had visited the sideboard in the parlour and concealed a bottle beneath his coat, he passed out and entered the shop, the door of which was unlocked, though it was too early for any of the men to have arrived. When he reached the upper floor the sound of stertorous breathing furnished the explanation—the master had not been a-bed, and was sleeping off his drunken fit in the office. Inman glanced at the unpleasant picture and then turned away contemptuously.
“You’ve finished the whisky, I see,” he muttered. “ ‘All for my-sen,’ as usual! But I’ll return good for evil—you shall have a change this time. You’ll want a friend before the day’s out.” Whereupon he opened his coat and deposited the new bottle upon the shelf in the cupboard.
Baldwin was far from sober when he awoke, and curtly refused his breakfast; but he consented to drink the cup of coffee Inman brought him, though not until a liberal measure of rum had been mixed with it. After that he brightened, but had more sense than to attempt to leave the office, and he had not moved from his chair when the lawyer’s clerk arrived close on noon.