Free Cunning Murrell by Arthur Morrison

table, full before the stranger’s face; and the
stranger instantly reached for the candlestick and put it behind him, at the
table-end.
    Murrell’s keen eyes never left the man’s face, muffled as it was, and now
in deep shade. But he let the candle stay, and took a seat opposite his
client. “Well,” he said, “is’t med’sun, or what? Be you muffled agin the
coad?”
    “‘Taren’t med’sun,” the other replied. “‘Taren’t med’sun, an’ ‘taren’t a
coad chill. ‘Tis adwice, an’—an’—mayhap summat more. ‘Tis well
knowed yow do—summat more.”
    “Well?” Murrell’s eyes never winked nor shifted from the shadowy patch
that marked the region of the stranger’s face. “Well,” the stranger went on
awkwardly, “‘tis for to say, sich as things lost and stole, buried property,
fortunes by the stars, an’ that.”
    Murrell said nothing, and presently the stranger filled the gap by adding
“An’ matters o’ business, pardners an’ that.”
    “Very well,” Murrell said thereupon. “What’s the property wuth?”
    “Property wuth?” the stranger repeated, as one taken by surprise and a
shade disconcerted. “Property—wuth. Well, that depends.”
    “Ah,” said Murrell, easily, “depends on where you sell it, p’r’aps. Cost
fifty pound to buy?”
    “Double that,” said the other, rubbing his nose where the muffler tickled
it. “Double that, an’ a bit more, one way an’ another. But wuth more—a
lot more, to sell.”
    “Three or fower hundred pound, mayhap?”
    “Ay, all that, an’ over. But why d’ye ask?”
    “‘Tis likely I may need it to go in a geomantic formula,” said Murrell,
who knew the words were Greek to his client. “An’ now what about your
pardner?”
    “Pardner?” exclaimed the other, with astonishment. “Why, I hevn’t said I
had a pardner, hev I?”
    “‘Tis my business to know many things people don’t tell me,” Murrell
answered placidly, “What about your pardner?”
    “If yow know,” said the visitor doggedly, and with a shade of suspicion,
“there’s no need o’ me to tell ye.”
    “I ask for what I don’t know—yet,” the cunning man replied, placidly
as before. “If you den’t want to tell me ye woo’n’t ha’ come; an’ if your
mind’s changed you can go now.”
    There was a few moments’ pause, and then the stranger said, with something
of sulky fierceness: “I want to know if my pardner be a true man to me.”
    “Very well.” Murrell took a scrap of paper, already written close on one
side, from his pocket, reached ink and pen from the mantelpiece, and wrote in
a tiny, crabbed hand: If pardner be faithfull.
    “An’ if not,” the client went on, “adwice accordin’.”
    Murrell wrote a line below the other: If not, what to doe. Then he
asked: “An’ where be the property?”
    The visitor shuffled uneasily. “O, that’s safe enough—put away.”
    “Hid?”
    The man grunted. “Well, yes, ‘tis,” he admitted.
    Murrell added another line: Propperty hid . “An’ wuth fower hundred
pound?” he asked.
    “Ay, or more.”
    Murrell wrote: Worth above £400 . He pushed the pen and ink along
the table, with another scrap of paper. “There be fower pints,” he said, “an’
by this curis art we take no more than fower pints at a time. Take you the
pen, good friend, an’ make you fower lines o’ strokes, without counting; a
line below a line, an’ stop when you please.”
    The man took the pen in a great brown, unaccustomed fist, and squared his
elbows. “Begin here?” he asked.
    “Ay, begin a-top. Now a row o’ strokes, an’ no counting.”
    With slow labour the stranger traced a row of straggling strokes, and then
three more rows below, Murrell watching his face still; though now the keen
look had a tinge of something else—perhaps of contempt.
    The task ended, Murrell drew the paper toward him, and, rapidly scanning
the rows of strokes, placed opposite