affable mood that his name was Bob Williams, and that he hoped to run against me at Auteuil, had a miserable apartment on the "third" of a house in this dingy street; and there he took me, offering me half-a-tumbler of neat whisky, which, he went on to explain, would "knock flies" out of me. For himself, he sat upon a low bed and smoked a clay pipe,[ 48] while I had an arm-chair, lacking springs; and one of my cigars for obvious reasons. When we were thus accommodated he opened the ball, being no longer nervous or hesitating.

[ 48]

"Well, old chap,"—I was that already to him—"what can I tell you, and what do you know?"

"I know this much," said I; "last month the grave of Madame Brewer at Raincy was rifled. The man who did it stole a necklace of green diamonds, real or sham, but the latter, I am thinking."

"As true as gospel—I was the man who took them, and they were sham, and be damned to them!"

"Well, you're a pretty ruffian," I said. "But what I want to know is, how did you come to find out that the stones were there, and who was the man who got the real necklace I made for Madame Brewer only a few months ago?"

"Oh, that's what you want to know, is it? Well, it's worth something, that is; I don't know that he ain't a pard of mine; and about no other necklace I ain't heard nothing. You know a blarmed sight too much, it seems to me, guv'ner."

"That may be," said I, "but you can add to what I know, and it might be worth fifty pounds to you."

"On the cushion?"

"I don't understand."

"Well, on that table then?"

"Scarcely. Twenty-five now, and twenty-five when I find that you have told me the truth."

"Let's see the shiners."[ 49]

[ 49]

I counted out the money on to the bed—five English bank notes, which he eyed suspiciously.

"May, his mark," he said, thumbing the paper. "Well, as I'm shifting for Newmarket to-morrow that's not much odds, if you're not shoving the queer on me."

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