"Not quite--I've got one more."
"Who--God?" asked the boy naturally.
Poor Jeffreys! He sometimes forgot that Friend, and it startled and
humbled him to hear the little fellow's simple question.
"Of course, he's got Him," interposed Teddy, without giving him time to
reply. "But who else, Jeff?"
"I saw him not long ago," said Jeffreys. "His name's Julius."
"You don't like him more than us, do you?" asked Teddy rather anxiously.
"Not a quarter as much, old chap," said Jeffreys.
There was a pause, during which Trimble chuckled to think how little the
speaker guessed into whose ears he was betraying the name of his
villainous accomplice! Presently, however, he started to hear the sound
of his own name.
"Jeff," said Teddy, "isn't Mr Trimble a beast?"
"Let's talk about something pleasant," suggested Jeffreys, by way of
begging the question.
"Let's talk about hanging him; that would be pleasant," said Teddy.
"Would you be sorry if he was dead?" demanded Teddy, in his matter-of-
fact way. "I say, Jeff, wouldn't it be jolly if we could kill everybody
we hated?"
"Wouldn't it be jolly if every little boy who talked like a little
donkey were to have his ears boxed?" said Jeffreys.
"I wish he'd been on the tricycle instead of mother," continued Teddy,
with a sigh of content at the bare idea.
"Teddy, you are not as nice a little boy as I thought when you talk like
that," said Jeffreys. "Come and let's have one more turn on the
machine, and then I must hurry back, or Mrs Trimble will think I'm
lost."
Jeffreys got back to Galloway House about ten o'clock, and found Jonah
sitting up for him.
"So you _have_ come back," said that individual pompously. "I hope
you've enjoyed your evening out."
"Yes," said Jeffreys, "pretty well."
"Oh!" said Jonah to himself, as he went up to bed, bursting with
excitement. "If he only knew what I know! Let me see--"
And then he went over in his mind the events of that wonderful evening,
the visit to the post-office and the horrified look as he came out
letter in hand; the mysterious conference with the bookseller, doubtless
over this very letter. And how artfully he had been pretending to look
at the books outside till he saw no one was looking! Then, the secret
meeting with his accomplice in the minster yard--Mr Julius, yes, that
was the name he had himself told the boys--and the altercation over the
money, doubtless the booty of their crime, and Mr Julius's denunciation
of Jeffreys as a murderer! Whew! Then that lonely country walk, and
that search on the bank, and that exclamation, "It was this very place!"
Whew! Jonah had tied a bit of his bootlace on the hedge just under the
spot, and could find it again within a foot. Then the rencontre with
the two boys and the strange, enigmatical talk in the shed, pointing to
the plot of a new crime of which he--Trimble--was to be the victim. Ha,
ha!--and the business over that tricycle too, in the candle-light.
Jonah could see through that. He could put a spoke in a wheel as well
as Jeffreys.
Two things were plain. He must get hold of the letter; and he must
visit the scene of the crime _with a spade_! Then--
Jonah sat up half the night thinking of it, till at last the deep
breathing of his colleague in the next room reminded him that now at any
rate was the time to get the letter. He had seen Jeffreys crush it into
his side pocket after leaving the bookseller's and he had heard him
before getting into bed just now hang his coat on the peg behind the
door. And it was hot, and the door was open.
What a day Jonah was having!
Fortune favours the brave. It was a work of two minutes only. The
pocket was there at his hand before he had so much as put a foot in the
room. And there was the letter--two letters--and not a board creaked or
a footstep sounded before he was safe back in his own room with the
documentary evidence before him.
There was only one letter after all. The other paper was a rubbishing
rigmarole about General Monk and the Parliament 1660. This Jonah tossed
contemptuously into the grate. But the other letter, how his flesh
crept as he read it! It had no date, and was signed only in initials.
"Dear J. There is no news. I can understand your trouble and remorse,
and this uncertainty makes it all the more terrible to you. I know it
is vain to say to you, `Forget,' but do not write about poor Forrester's
blood being on your head! Your duty is to live and redeem the past.
Let the dead bury their dead, dear fellow, and turn your eyes forward,
like a brave man. Yours ever, J.F."
Do you wonder if Jonah's blood curdled in his veins--"remorse,"
"uncertainty," "poor Forrester," "his blood on your head," eh? "bury
your dead"!
Whew! _What_ a day Jonah had had, to be sure!