/Round Three (and last)/.–Conscience came up very weak, and with Garnet as strong as ever it was plain that the round would be a brief one. This proved to be the case. Early in the second minute Garnet cross-countered with “All’s Fair in Love and War.” Conscience down and out. The winner left the ring without a mark.
…..
I rose, feeling much refreshed.
That afternoon I interviewed Mr. Hawk in the bar-parlour of the Net and Mackerel.
“Hawk,” I said to him darkly, over a mystic and conspirator-like pot of ale, “I want you, next time you take Professor Derrick out fishing”–here I glanced round, to make sure that we were not overheard–“to upset him.”
His astonished face rose slowly from the pot of ale like a full moon.
“What ‘ud I do that for?” he gasped.
“Five shillings, I hope,” said I, “but I am prepared to go to ten.”
He gurgled.
I encored his pot of ale.
He kept on gurgling.
I argued with the man.
I spoke splendidly. I was eloquent, but at the same time concise. My choice of words was superb. I crystallised my ideas into pithy sentences which a child could have understood.
And at the end of half-an-hour he had grasped the salient points of the scheme. Also he imagined that I wished the professor upset by way of a practical joke. He gave me to understand that this was the type of humour which was to be expected from a gentleman from London. I am afraid he must at one period in his career have lived at one of those watering-places at which trippers congregate. He did not seem to think highly of the Londoner.
I let it rest at that. I could not give my true reason, and this served as well as any.
…..
At the last moment he recollected that he, too, would get wet when the accident took place, and he raised the price to a sovereign.
A mercenary man. It is painful to see how rapidly the old simple spirit is dying out of our rural districts. Twenty years ago a fisherman would have been charmed to do a little job like that for a screw of tobacco.
CHAPTER XI
THE BRAVE PRESERVER
I could have wished, during the next few days, that Mr. Harry Hawk’s attitude towards myself had not been so unctuously confidential and mysterious. It was unnecessary, in my opinion, for him to grin meaningly when he met me in the street. His sly wink when we passed each other on the Cob struck me as in indifferent taste. The thing had been definitely arranged (ten shillings down and ten when it was over), and there was no need for any cloak and dark-lantern effects. I objected strongly to being treated as the villain of a melodrama. I was merely an ordinary well-meaning man, forced by circumstances into doing the work of Providence. Mr. Hawk’s demeanour seemed to say, “We are two reckless scoundrels, but bless you, /I/ won’t give away your guilty secret.” The climax came one morning as I was going along the street towards the beach. I was passing a dark doorway, when out shimmered Mr. Hawk as if he had been a spectre instead of the most substantial man within a radius of ten miles.
” ‘St!” He whispered.
“Now look here, Hawk,” I said wrathfully, for the start he had given me had made me bite my tongue, “this has got to stop. I refuse to be haunted in this way. What is it now?”
“Mr. Derrick goes out this morning, zur.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “Get it over this morning, then, without fail. I couldn’t stand another day of it.”
I went on to the Cob, where I sat down. I was excited. Deeds of great import must shortly be done. I felt a little nervous. It would never do to bungle the thing. Suppose by some accident I were to drown the professor! Or suppose that, after all, he contented himself with a mere formal expression of thanks, and refused to let bygones be bygones. These things did not bear thinking of.
I got up and began to pace restlessly to and fro.