throat off-hand, it ain't likely he ain't prepared to cheek a police-officer. But when I reckoned up this young gent's face, what was it I see? Why, as plain as I see his nose and his moustachios—and he ain't bad off for neither of them," said the fingers, parenthetically—"I see that he hadn't done it. Now, a cove what's screwed up to face a judge and jury, maybe can face 'em, and never change a hue of his mug; but there isn't a cove as lives as can stand that first tap of a detective's hand upon his shoulder as tells him, plain as words, 'The game is up.' The best of 'em, and the pluckiest of 'em, drops under that. If they keeps the colour in their face—which some of 'em has got the power to do, and none as never tried it on can guess the pain—if they can do that 'ere, the perspiration breaks out wet and cold upon their for'eds, and that blows 'em. But this young gent—he was took aback, he was surprised, and he was riled, and used bad language; but his colour never changed, and he wasn't once knocked over till Jinks, unbusiness-like, told him of his uncle's murder, when he turned as white as that 'ere 'ed of Bon-er-part." Mr. Peters, for want of a better comparison, glanced in the direction of a bust of the victor of Marengo, which, what with tobacco-smoke and a ferocious pair of burnt cork moustachios, was by no means the whitest object in creation.
"Now, what a detective officer's good at, if he's worth his salt, is this 'ere: when he sees two here and another two there, he can put 'em together, though they might be a mile apart to anybody not up to the trade, and make 'em into four. So, thinks I, the gent isn't took aback at bein' arrested; but he is took aback when he hears as how his uncle's murdered. Now, if he'd committed the murder, he'd know of it; and he might sham surprise, but he wouldn't be surprised; and this young gent was knocked all of a heap as genuine as—" Mr. Peters's ideas still revert to the bust of Napoleon—"as ever that 'ere forring cove was, when he sees his old guard scrunched up small at the battle of Waterloo."
"Heaven knows, Peters," said Richard, taking his pipe out of his mouth, and looking up from his stooping position over the fire, "Heaven knows you were right; I did feel my heart turn cold when I heard of that good man's death."
"Well, that they'd got the wrong un I saw was as clear as daylight—but where was the right un? That was the question. Whoever committed the murder did it for the money in that 'ere cabinet: and sold agen they was, whoever they was, and didn't get the money. Who was in the house? This young gent's mother and the servant. I was nobody in the Gardenford force, and I was less than nobody at Slopperton; so get into that house at the Black Mill I couldn't. This young gent was walked off to jail, and I was sent about my business—my orders
