The Tallants of Barton, vol. 3 (of 3) : $b A tale of fortune and financeHatton, Joseph
General
The Tallants of Barton, vol. 3 (of 3) : $b A tale of fortune and finance
Hatton, Joseph
English fiction -- 19th century
“Then here goes! The day after the murder as me and Momus were having
a bit o’ dinner in at the Music-Hall Tavern at the back of the house
here, a traveller comes in--a half-starved looking sort of a chap--and
he sets down afore the fire. Momus, that’s my dog, sir, one of the
wonderfullest animals out, sir. Momus smells at him, as if she had met
him afore, and walks round him on her hind-legs. That causes me to take
notice of him like. The gal comes in, and he orders some grub, and asks
if there’s a fire in the other room: she says yes, and in he goes. ‘Do
you know him, Momus; does yer know the gent, old gal?’ She wags her
bit o’ stump, as much as to say ‘I does,’ and so does yer guvner, says
I, all of a suddent; ’cos it just then flashed on me that it were my
son-in-law. Yes, gents, I ain’t talking no bosh--my son-in-law, Mr.
Jefferson Crawley.”
Mr. Bales pursed up his lips, and gave a low whistle at this, and could
not resist making other indications of his surprise and satisfaction.
“Oh, you knows him, do yer?” said the porter. “Well, arter a bit, I
goes into the room, and I sees him a reading the newspaper all about
the murder, and when I goes in he drops it as though it had bitten
him. ‘Don’t yer like the news, guvner,’ says I? ‘don’t you like it,
son-in-law?’ He looked awful at this. He bolted with my gal ‘Chrissy,’
you know.”
The detective whistled again.
“Oh, you know’d her, did yer?” said the porter.
“I know she was not your daughter,” said Bales.
“S’help me Davy, but you seem to know everything.”
“Never mind, go on,” said Bales.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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