He shrugged his shoulders with an air of distinct vagueness.
“Wire to her to-night,” he urged. “Your man can take the message down to the Charing Cross office, and she’ll get it at eight o’clock in the morning. The funeral is over, so there is nothing to prevent her coming to town.”
I was compelled to agree to his suggestion, although loth to again bring pain and annoyance to my love. I knew how she had suffered when, a few days ago, I had questioned her, and I felt convinced by her manner that, although she had refused to speak, she herself was innocent. Her lips were sealed by word of honour.
According to appointment Jevons met me when I had finished my next morning’s work at Guy’s, and we took a glass of sherry together in a neighbouring bar. Then at his invitation I accompanied him along the Borough High Street and Newington Causeway to the London Road, until we came to a row of costermongers’ barrows drawn up beside the pavement. Before one of these, piled with vegetables ready for the Saturday-night market, he stopped, and was immediately recognised by the owner—a tall, consumptive-looking man, whose face struck me somehow as being familiar.
“Well, Lane?” my companion said. “Busy, eh?”
“Not very, sir,” was the answer, with the true cockney twang. “Trade ain’t very brisk. There’s too bloomin’ many of us ’ere nowadays.”
Leaving my side my companion advanced towards the man and whispered some confidential words that I could not catch, at the same time pulling something from his breast-pocket and showing it to him.
“Oh, yes, sir. No doubt abawt it!” I heard the man exclaim.
Then, in reply to a further question from Jevons, he said:
“’Arry ’Arding used to work at Curtis’s. So I fancy that ’ud be the place to find out somethink. I’m keepin’ my ears open, you bet,” and he winked knowingly.