Trimble saw them disappear into the garden, and, guided by their cheery voices, soon discovered the back of the shed in which the momentous surgical operation was to take place. It backed on the road, and might have been built for Trimble"s purpose. For the woodwork abounded in most convenient cracks, through which a spy might peep and listen luxuriously. What a day Jonah was having!
The Roshers conducted their friend into the place like anxious relatives who conduct a physician into a sick-chamber. The poor patient lay on the floor in a very bad way. Two wheels were off, the axle was bent, the wire spokes were twisted, the saddle was off, and the brake was all over the place.
Jeffreys shook his head and looked grave.
"It"s a bad job," said he.
"You see, we were giving mother a ride on it, and she"s too heavy-- especially going downhill. She thought we were holding it, but it got away. We yelled to her to put on the brake, but she didn"t, and it went bang into the wall."
"And your mother?" inquired Jeffreys, somewhat anxiously.
"Oh, her face is much better now. The doctor says there"ll be hardly any marks left after all."
It was a long business putting the unlucky tricycle in order. Jeffreys was not a mechanic. All he could do was to put the parts together in a makeshift way, and by straightening some of the bent parts and greasing some of the stiff parts restore the iron horse into a gloomy semblance of his old self.
The boys were as grateful and delighted as if he had constructed a new machine out of s.p.a.ce; and when at last a trial trip demonstrated that at any rate the wheels would go round and the saddle would carry them, their hearts overflowed.
"You are a real brick, Jeff," said Teddy; "I wish I could give you a hundred pounds!"
"I don"t want a hundred pounds," said Jeffreys, with a smile; "if you and Freddy and I are good friends, that"s worth a lot more to me."
"Why?" demanded Freddy; "are we the only friends you"ve got?"
Jeffreys looked out of the window and said,--
"Not quite--I"ve got one more."
"Who--G.o.d?" 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 doc.u.mentary 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!
CHAPTER EIGHT.
I KNOW A BANK.
Jonah Trimble may not have been a genius of the first water, but he was at least wise enough to know that he could not both have his cake and eat it. His discovery of Jeffreys" villainy was a most appetising cake, and it wanted some little self-denial to keep his own counsel about it, and not spoil sport by springing his mine until all the trains were laid.
Another consideration, moreover, which prevented his taking immediate action was that Jeffreys was extremely useful at Galloway House, and could not be spared just yet--even to the gallows. In a few months"
time, when the good name of the school, which had rapidly risen since he came upon the scene, was well established, things might be brought to a climax. Meanwhile Jonah Trimble would keep his eye on his man, read his _Eugene Aram_, and follow up his clues.
Jeffreys awoke on the following morning with a feeling of oppression on his mind which for a little time he could not define. It was not his guardian"s words, bitter as they had been; it was not the insolence of his fellow-usher, intolerable as that was becoming. When at last his wandering thoughts came in and gave the trouble shape, he found it took a much more practical form. He was in debt seven pounds to Mr Frampton. It never occurred to him to wonder whether Mr Halgrove had been telling him the truth or not, nor to his unbusinesslike mind did it occur that his guardian, as the trustee responsible for what money he once had, was liable for the debt, however much he might like to repudiate it.