‘I ain’t grumbling, bless you. I’ll take it. Give us your fist.’ Marston held out his hand, and Heckett gripped it. ‘Then, that’s settled,’ said Marston. ‘Directly the keys are ready we can arrange everything.’ ‘By-the-bye,’ said Marston, as he was turning to go, ‘what about that girl? Where’s her mother? I suppose she’s Gertie’s child, isn’t she?’ ‘Gertie’s dead!’ said the old man, quietly. ‘Gertie dead? I didn’t know that.’ ‘She died directly after the Egerton affair—died here. Ah, I never could make it out,’ added Heckett, smoking his pipe fiercely. ‘But she wasn’t married, was she? We never knew that she was.’ ‘I can’t tell you, Marston. I often thinks it over and wonders what the real truth of the affair was. Perhaps you might help me. You’re a scholard and pretty cute. You’ve read them ere stories in the ‘lustrated papers as gals read, ain’t you?’ ‘I have read some of them years ago,’ answered Marston. ‘Well, the story of that child as you see here just now’s one on ‘em ready wrote. She’s my Gertie’s young un right enough, for she were born here. You knew my Gertie? She was as handsome a wench as you could see in a day’s march, and a reg’lar lady in her ways, warn’t she?’ ‘She was,’ said Marston; ‘it was always a mystery how she could be your daughter.’ ‘She took arter her mother,’ answered Heckett; ‘and Gertie, the child as you see, takes arter her. Well, you know as when I had the betting office in Soho, and young swells used to come, and we rigged up a roulette table in the back room? You remember them days?’ ‘No one better, worse luck.’ ‘You was one of the swells as come here, you and Birnie and Gurth Egerton and his cousin Ralph, and you all used to chaff my gal and pretend to make love to her, and all that sort of bosh.’ ‘But she always kept us at a distance; she was as savage as a little tiger if any of us spoke too freely to her.’ ‘I know it, and that’s why I trusted her among you, for you were as fast a lot of young rascals as could be found in London at that time, and there wasn’t one of you as had a mag to fly with, except what you got out of Ralph, for you was all dead broke.’ ‘You knew it?’ ‘Yes, I knew it, and I didn’t pertend to be a gentleman. Everybody knew what I was; it was my business to live on greenhorns and fools. You was amatoors. You pertended to be gentlemen, and you brought a pal here and made him drunk night after night, and robbed him.’ ‘You had your share.’ ‘I don’t say I didn’t. Well, what happened? One night, at the old drum, there was a big row, the lights were knocked over, and in the darkness some one stabbed Ralph Egerton. Who, nobody knows, except the man as did it. He was taken away and he died at his own place soon after, and was buried, and nobody knew anything about it, thank God! but them as was mixed up in it.’ ‘Birnie managed that affair deuced well,’ said Marston.