"Ah!" exclaimed Auriol. "You are the villains who beset me in the ruined house in the Vauxhall Road."
"Your pocket-book has been found, I tell you," replied the Tinker, "and from it ve have made the most awful diskiveries. Our werry 'air stood on end ven ve first read the shockin' particulars. What a bloodthirsty ruffian you must be! Vy, ve finds you've been i' the habit o' makin' avay with a young ooman vonce every ten years. Your last wictim wos in 1820—the last but one, in 1810—and the one before her, in 1800."
"Hangin's too good for you!" cried the Sandman; "but if ve peaches you're sartin to sving."
"I hope that pretty creater I jist see ain't to be the next wictim?" said Ginger.
"Peace!" thundered Auriol. "What do you require?"
"A hundred pound each'll buy our silence," replied the Tinker.
"Ve ought to have double that," said the Sandman, "for screenin' sich atterocious crimes as he has parpetrated. Ve're not werry partic'lar ourselves, but ve don't commit murder wholesale."
"Ve don't commit murder at all," said Ginger.
"You may fancy," pursued the Tinker, "that ve ain't perfectly acvainted with your history, but to prove that ve are, I'll just rub up your memory. Did you ever hear tell of a gemman as murdered Doctor Lamb, the famous halchemist o' Queen Bess's time, and, havin' drank the 'lixir vich the doctor had made for hisself, has lived ever since? Did you ever hear tell of such a person, I say?"
Auriol gazed at him in astonishment.