D. Wragg seemed to think that, in spite of his words, the mistake might
be on his side if he made any complaints about the treatment he had
received from the police. Once or twice he bristled up, and seemed to
be making ready for a grand eruption; but second thoughts always came in
time to calm him down, and those second thoughts, as a rule, related to
the three dogs in the attic, the sacks of new corks, and the large flat
hamper of Westphalia hams, respecting the possession of which goods he
would not have liked to be too closely questioned.
That the police still had an eye upon his place he was sure; for he had
many little quiet hints to that effect from friends outside, who knew a
policeman in plain-clothes quite as well as if he were in uniform, and
who, in consequence, were rather given to laughing at the popular notion
that plain-clothes officers were able to mix here and there unknown with
any society they might choose. But as the police seemed disposed to
confine their attentions to a little quiet surveillance, and in other
respects left him quite at peace, D. Wragg did not conceive that it
would be advisable to beard the lions of the public order in their dens;
so he winked to himself, watched anxiously every bystander who struck
him as being at all like a policeman in _mufti_, and contented himself
with talking largely to his confidential friends, though how far he was
placing confidence in them remains to be proved.
"Look here, you know," he said to Monsieur Canau one morning, when they
had met on that neutral ground the passage, and adjourn ed to the shop,
where they stood looking at one another in a curious distrustful
fashion,--"look here, you know; we're old friends, and you've lodged
with me goodness knows how many years. I don't mind speaking out before
you. But don't you make no mistake; there ain't nothing kept back by
me. As to them dorgs, how could I help about the dorgs when friends
comes to me and says, `My dorg ain't quite the thing to-day; I think
I'll get you to give him a dust o' your distemper powder.' And another
one says, `I wish you'd take my dorg for a bit, and see if you think
it's mange as is a-comin' on;' while directly after comes another with a
skye wiry, and says as he isn't satisfied with the sit of his dorg's
ears, nor the way he sets up his tail. Well, in course I has to see to
these things for 'em, my place being a sorter orspittle; and that's how
them dorgs come to be up-stairs; and the way they've come on since I've
had 'em is something wonderful."
Monsieur Canau nodded, and began to roll up a cigarette with clever
manipulating fingers, keeping his eyes half closed the while, and
smiling in a strange reserved way, that might have meant amusement,
contempt, or merely sociability.