"Yes, that was all the name he gave me; a regular thick 'un, that blind chap, an' a flow o' language as would curl the sheathing off a ship's bottom. He came the evening before, it seems, but found the place shut up--servant gal took her hook. Well now, he'd done all but see Marr down here at the Blue Gate--he'd seen him as clear as a blind man could, he said, with his ears: an' he came to me to give me the tip an' earn anything I'd give him for it. It amounted to this. It was plain enough Marr had come along here all right, an' pitched on some sort o' quarters; but it was clear he wasn't fit to be trusted alone in such a place at all. For the blind chap found him drunk, an' in tow with as precious a pair o' bully-boys as Blue Gate could show. Not only drunk, neither, but drunk with a slack jaw--drunk an' gabbling, drunk an' talkin' business--_my_ business--an' lettin' out all there was to let,--this an' that an' t'other an' Lord knows what! It was only because of his drunken jabber that the blind man found out who he was." "And this was the day before yesterday?" asked Captain Nat. "Yes." Captain Nat shook his head. "If he was like that the day before yesterday," he said, "in tow with such chaps as you say,--well, whatever he had on him ain't on him now. An' it 'ud puzzle a cleverer man than me to find it. You may lay to that." Viney swore, and stamped a foot, and swore again. "But see," he said, "ain't there a chance? It was in notes, all of it. Them chaps'll be afraid to pass notes. Couldn't most of it be got back on an arrangement to cash the rest? You can find 'em if you try, with all your chances. Come--I'll pay fair for what I get, to you an' all." "See how you've left it," remarked Captain Nat; and Viney swore again. "This was all done the day before yesterday. Well, you don't hear of it yourself till yesterday, an' now you don't come to me till to-day." Viney swore once more, and grinned twice as wide in his rage. "Yes," he said, "that was Blind George's doing. I sent him back to see what _he_ could do, an' ain't seen him since. Like as not he's standing in with the others." "Ay, that's likely," the old man answered, "very likely. Blind George is as tough a lot as any in Blue Gate, for all he's blind. You'd never ha' heard of it at all if they'd ha' greased him a bit at first. I expect they shut him out, to keep the plant to themselves; an' so he came to you for anything he could pick up. An' now----" Viney cursed them all, and Blind George and himself together; but most he cursed Marr; and so talking, the two men walked to and fro in the passage. * * * * *