Part 11 (2/2)

I had spoken thus with the design of putting him off; but he was undisguisedly an ill-bred man, and I saw that I could have bought the emeralds from him for five hundred pounds. My hint--if such you could call it--fell upon deaf ears; and he, seeming not to hear it, continued to argle-bargle, but betraying himself in every word he said.

”Come, now,” he cried, ”you don't want to be hard upon me; give me a check for five hundred, and send the balance to Brighton in a week if you find them as good as you think. That's a fair offer, isn't it?”

”The offer is fair enough,” said I; ”but you forget that I did not come here to buy emeralds. I am in Pangbourne to catch chub, as you saw this afternoon.”

”I'm afraid I can't agree to that,” he replied with a laugh; ”I did not see you catch chub this afternoon--I saw you miss three.”

”The bait was poor,” I said meaningly; ”fish are as canny as men, and don't take pretty things if they think there's a hook in them.”

This I gave him with such a stare that he rose up suddenly from his chair, and, having made a bungling parcel of his jewels, went off by himself. He had to pa.s.s my window as he left the inn, and as he crossed the road I called after him, saying--

”You'll be losing your train to London.”

”Be d----d to that!” said he; and with such a salute he turned the angle of the road, and I lost sight of him.

But I thought much of his emeralds through the night, both in my walk across the old wooden bridge to Whitchurch, when the river lay dark and gloomy with the sough of the breeze in the reeds and sedge-gra.s.s; and again as I lay in the old wooden ”best-bed” of the inn, and contemplated the ”sampler” which bore witness to the energy of one Jane Atkins, whose work it was. By what chance had the man found me out? Whence came his seedy clothes and his jewels? Who was the pretty woman who had gone up from the hard with him? He had come by the stones fraudulently, of course; had the case been different he would have sent them to London to a house of substance, and there got his price for them. At one time I felt that it lay upon me to advise the police in Reading of the offer I had received; at another, there came some regret for the stones, and at the manner of his departure. The season had been one of emeralds. I could have sold the pair he had for some profit, and, as my greed told me, I could have bought them cheap. At the end of it I fell asleep to dream that I rowed to Mapledurham in an emerald boat, and that a man with emerald eyes steered me abominably.

On the next day, quite early in the morning, I set out in a dog-cart for Reading, having a _rendezvous_ with Barisbroke at the Kennet's mouth, whence we were to start for a day's sport upon that fish-breeding river.

My drive took me by the old Bath-road, turning to the left midway up the village street; but I had not gone very far upon the Reading-road before I saw the handsome woman--the wife, as I a.s.sumed, of the velvet-coated man--now dressed with exceeding poorness, and carrying a heavy bag towards the biscuit town. At this point the sun beat early upon the sandy way with a s.h.i.+mmer of white and misty light, which promised great heat of the forenoon; there was scarce a quiver of wind in the woods to the left of me, and I did not doubt that walking was a great labor. Yet, when I reined in the cob, and asked the woman, if at least I might not carry her bag to Reading and leave it for her, she thanked me somewhat curtly, I thought, and evidently resented any notice of her difficulty.

It occurred to me, as I drove on, that the man, who had been with her on the previous day, had really left by the last train for London; but when I came into Reading, and was about to cross the High Street, to reach Earleigh, I saw the name Benjamin Wain superscribed above a little chemist's shop, and I stopped at once. I know that a country tradesman will gossip like a fishwife; and I asked the man for some preparation which he could not possibly find in the pharmacopoeia, and so began to feel my ground.

”You're well ahead of the times here,” said I, looking at his show-case, which was wofully dest.i.tute of drugs. ”I shouldn't have thought that you'd be asked for tabloids in a place like Reading.”

”Oh, but we are,” said he, readily; ”it's a wonderfully advanced town is Reading--you won't get much in Regent Street which is not here. I've lived in Reading all my life--and seen changes, sir, indeed I have!”

”You know most of the people then?” said I, with a purpose.

”Ay,” said he, ”I've born and buried a many, so to speak; seen children grow to men and women, and men and women grow to children--you wouldn't think it perhaps!”

”No,” said I, ”you don't show it; but your reputation, if I may say so, goes beyond this place. I was in Pangbourne yesterday, where a tall, yellow-haired man was speaking of you; who is he, I wonder?”

”A tall, yellow-haired man!” he exclaimed, putting his finger in the center of his forehead as if in aid of memory; ”I didn't know there were such in Reading. A tall, yellow--let me see, now----”

”You sold him some tabloids of nitro-glycerine; perhaps that will help to his identification?” said I.

”Ah, now I know you're wrong,” said he; ”there's only one man within five miles of here who uses that stuff, and he hasn't got yellow hair--ha, ha, he hasn't got any at all.”

”Who is he?” I asked with growing curiosity.

”Why, old Jabez Ladd, the miser, out at Yore Park; he takes that stuff for his heart, sir. Wonderful weak heart he has, too; but he hasn't got yellow hair--no, I may say with conviction that he has no hair at all.”

I had learnt all I needed, for the mere mention of the name Jabez Ladd was sufficient for me. At the man's words a whole freshet of ideas seemed to rush to my mind. I had known the miser for years as one of the hardest jewel buyers in the country; I had sold him thousands of pounds'

worth of stuff; I had heard the strangest traditions of his astounding meanness and self-denial. They even said that he forbade himself a candle after dusk, and that his fare was oatmeal and brown bread; while he lived in a house which would not have been a poor retreat for a millionaire. This I knew, but the words of the apothecary had made other things clear to me--one, that the yellow-haired man had got his emeralds in a box which must have come from Ladd's house, since he alone in the neighborhood took tabloids of nitro-glycerine; another, that the man's very shabbiness and obvious shuffling pointed very strongly to the conclusion that he should be watched.

Of these things was I sure as I met Barisbroke, and I turned them over in my mind often during the moderate sport of the forenoon, and after.

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