"Concernuating? Of? What?" said Uncle Mo in three separate sentences, each one accompanied by a tap of his pipe-bowl on the wooden table at The Sun parlour. The third qualified it for refilling. You will see, if you are attentive and observant, that this was Mo's first pipe that afternoon; as, if the ashes had been hot, he would not have emptied them on that table, but rather on the hob, or in the brazen spittoon.
"Him," said Mr. Jerry, too briefly. For he felt bound to add:—"Coldbath Fields. Anyone giving information that will lead to apprehension of, will receive the above reward. Your friend, you know!"
"My friend's the man, Jerry. Supposin'—just for argewment—I fist that friend o' mine Monday morning, I'll make him an allowance'll last him over Sunday. You wouldn't think it of me, Jerry, but I'm a bad-tempered man, underneath the skin. And when I see our old girl M'riar run away with like by an infernal scoundrel.... Well, Jerry, I lose my temper! That I do." And Uncle Mo seemed to need the pipe he was lighting, to calm him.
"He's where her money goes, Mo—that's it, ain't it?"
"That's about it, sir. So p'hraps when I say I don't know how M'riar come to be so short of cash, I ought to say I do know. Because I do know, as flat as ever so much Gospel." So the Emperor of Russia might not have remained unenlightened.
Mr. Jerry reflected. "You say he hasn't been near the Court again, Mo?"
"Not since that last time I told you about. What M'riar told me of. When he showed his knife to frighten her. I couldn't be off telling Sim Rowe, at the Station, about it, because of the children; and he's keeping an eye. But the beggar's not been anigh the Court since. Nor I don't suppose he'll come."
"But when ever does he see M'riar, to get at her savings?—that's what I'd like to know. Eh, Mo?"
"M'riar ain't tied to the house. She's free to come and go. I don't take kindly to prying and spying on her."
A long chat which followed evolved a clear view of the position. After Mo's interview with Aunt M'riar just before Gwen's visit, he had applied to his friend the Police-Inspector, with the result that the Court had been the subject of a continuous veiled vigilance. He had, however, been so far swayed by the distress of Aunt M'riar at the possibility that she might actually witness the capture of her criminal husband, that he never revealed to Simeon Rowe that she had an interest in defeating his enterprise. The consequence was that every plain-clothes emissary put himself into direct personal communication with her, thereby ensuring the absence of Daverill from Sapps Court. She was of course guilty of a certain amount of duplicity in all this, and it weighed heavily on her conscience. But there was something to be said by way of excuse. He was—or had been—her husband, and she did not know the worst of his crimes. Had she done so, she might possibly have been ready to give him up to justice. But as Mo had told her this much, that his last achievement might lead him to the condemned cell, and its sequel, and she nevertheless shrank from betraying him, probably nothing short of the knowledge of the age and sex of his last victim would have caused her to do so. She had in her mind an image of a good, honest, old-fashioned murder; a strained episode in some burglary; perhaps not premeditated, but brought about by an indiscreet interruption of a fussy householder. There are felonies and felonies.