“Stabbed in three places, sir; and put out of the way in the river—that’s the surgeon’s report. Robbed of everything he possessed—that’s the police report, after searching his pockets.”
Amelius was silent. It had not entered into his calculations that crime breeds crime, and that the criminal might escape him under that law. For the moment, he was conscious of a sense of disappointment, revealing plainly that the desire for vengeance had mingled with the higher motives which animated him. He felt uneasy and ashamed, and longed as usual to take refuge in action from his own unwelcome thoughts. “Are you sure it is the man?” he asked. “My description may have misled the police—I should like to see him myself.”
“Certainly, sir. While we are about it, if you feel any curiosity to trace Jervy’s ill-gotten money, there’s a chance (from what I have heard) of finding the man with the squint. The people at our place think it’s likely he may have been concerned in the robbery, if he hasn’t committed the murder.”
In an hour after, under the guidance of Morcross, Amelius passed through the dreary doors of a deadhouse, situated on the southern bank of the Thames, and saw the body of Jervy stretched out on a stone slab. The guardian who held the lantern, inured to such horrible sights, declared that the corpse could not have been in the water more than two days. To any one who had seen the murdered man, the face, undisfigured by injury of any kind, was perfectly recognizable. Amelius knew him again, dead, as certainly as he had known him again, living, when he was waiting for Phoebe in the street.
“If you’re satisfied, sir,” said Morcross, “the inspector at the police-station is sending a sergeant to look after ‘Wall-Eyes’—the name they give hereabouts to the man suspected of the robbery. We can take the sergeant with us in the cab, if you like.”
Still keeping on the southern bank of the river, they drove for a quarter of an hour in a westerly direction, and stopped at a public-house. The sergeant of police went in by himself to make the first inquiries.
“We are a day too late, sir,” he said to Amelius, on returning to the cab. “Wall-Eyes was here last night, and Mother Sowler with him, judging by the description. Both of them drunk—and the woman the worse of the two. The landlord knew nothing more about it; but there’s a man at the bar tells me he heard of them this morning (still drinking) at the Dairy.”
“The Dairy?” Amelius repeated.
Morcross interposed with the necessary explanation. “An old house, sir, which once stood by itself in the fields. It was a dairy a hundred years ago; and it has kept the name ever since, though it’s nothing but a low lodging house now.”
“One of the worst places on this side of the river,” the sergeant added, “The landlord’s a returned convict. Sly as he is we shall have him again yet, for receiving stolen goods. There’s every sort of thief among his lodgers, from a pickpocket to a housebreaker. It’s my duty to continue the inquiry, sir; but a gentleman like you will be better, I should say, out of such a place as that.”