I nodded my head again. It was all I could do to keep myself standing upright.
“I suppose it’s a case of threatening to have him up, and make him settle it quietly for a pound or two? How much for me if you lay hold of him?”
“Half.”
I began to be afraid that he would suspect something if I was still silent. The wretch’s eyes twinkled again and he came yet closer.
“I drove him to the Red Lion, corner of Dodd Street and Rudgely Street. The house was shut up, but he was let in at the jug and bottle door, like a man who was known to the landlord. That’s as much as I can tell you, and I’m certain I’m right. He was the last fare I took up at night. The next morning master gave me the sack—said I cribbed his corn and his fares. I wish I had.”
I gathered from this that the crook-backed man had been a cab-driver.
“Why don’t you speak?” he asked, suspiciously. “Has she been telling you a pack of lies about me? What did she say when she came home?”
“What ought she to have said?”
“She ought to have said my fare was drunk, and she came in the way as he was going to get into the cab. That’s what she ought to have said to begin with.”
“But after?”