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Clough was talking to a sharp-looking lad, of apparently sixteen or seventeen years, who stood at the door leading into the shop, and who glanced at Collingwood with keen interest and speculation. "Here's Jabey Naylor wants to know if he's to do aught, Mestur," said the housekeeper.
How sublime a destiny, to stand for morals and muscle to the generations of Hoxton, to incarnate the copy-book crossed with the "Sporting Times!" Were they bearable in private life, these monsters of virtue? J. B. Howe was long this paragon of men affectionately curtailed to Jabey. Once, when the villain was about to club him, "Look out, Jabey!" cried an agonised female voice.
Already suspicion was in Collingwood's mind vague and indefinable, but there. He was half inclined to go straight back to Eldrick & Pascoe's and tell Eldrick what Jabey Naylor had just told him. But he reflected that while Naylor went out to post the letter, the old bookseller might have put the paper elsewhere; locked it up in his safe, perhaps.
Did he do something particular after half-past four?" "There was a post came in just about then, sir," answered Jabey. "There was an American letter that's it, sir just in front of you. Mr. Bartle read it, and asked me if we'd got a good clear copy of Hopkinson's History of Barford. I reminded him that there was a copy amongst the books that had been bought from Mallathorpe's Mill some time ago."
He found such things as keys, a purse, loose money, a memorandum book, a bookseller's catalogue or two, two or three letters of a business sort but there was no big folded paper, covered with writing, such as Jabey Naylor had described. The mention of that paper had excited Collingwood's curiosity. He rapidly summed up what he had learned.
"And you never saw him again?" Jabey shook his head. "Not alive, sir," he answered. "I saw him when they brought him back." "How long had he been out when you heard he was dead?" "About an hour, sir just after six it was when they told Mrs. Clough and me. He went out at ten minutes past five." Collingwood got up. He gave the lad's shoulder a friendly squeeze. "All right!" he said.
Collingwood made no remarks for the moment. He was wondering whether or not to tell what Jabey Naylor had told him about this paper taken from the linen pocket inside the History of Barford. But Mrs. Mallathorpe's ready explanation had given him a new idea, and he rose from his chair. "Thank you," he said. "I suppose that's it.
He sat down and began to tell Eldrick about his own suspicions of Pratt at the time of Antony Bartle's death; of what Jabey Naylor had told him about the paper taken from the History of Barford; of the lad's account of the old man's doings immediately afterwards; and of his own proceedings which had led him to believe for the time being that his suspicions were groundless.
Nor had he carried the folded paper in his pocket to Eldrick's when Jabey Naylor went out to post the letter, Antony had placed the folded paper and the American letter together in the book and left them there.
"And your name's what?" inquired Collingwood. "Jabez Naylor, sir, but everybody call me Jabey." "I see Jabey for short, eh?" said Collingwood good-humouredly. He walked into the shop, followed by the boy, and closed the door.
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