“Husband a law stationer, and a friend of my own,” says Mr Bucket. “Love him like a brother! — Now, what’s up?”

“Do you mean what business have we come upon?” Mr Smallweed asks, a little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.

“Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it’s all about in presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come.”

Mr Smallweed, beckoning Mr Chadband, takes a moment’s counsel with him in a whisper. Mr Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says aloud, “Yes. You first!” and retires to his former place.

“I was the client and friend of Mr Tulkinghorn,” pipes Grandfather Smallweed then; “I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was own brother to a brimstone magpie — leastways Mrs Smallweed. I come into Krook’s property. I examined all his papers and all his effects. They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters belonging to a dead and gone lodger, as was hid away at the back of a shelf in the side of Lady Jane’s bed — his cat’s bed. He hid all manner of things away, everywheres. Mr Tulkinghorn wanted ’em and got ’em, but I looked ’em over first. I’m a man of business, and I took a squint at ’em. They was letters from the lodger’s sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that’s not a common name, Honoria, is it? There’s no lady in this house that signs Honoria, is there? O no, I don’t think so! O no, I don’t think so! And not in the same hand, perhaps? O no, I don’t think so!”

Here Mr Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, “O dear me! O Lord! I’m shaken all to pieces!”

“Now, when you’re ready,” says Mr Bucket, after awaiting his recovery, “to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.”

“Haven’t I come to it, Mr Bucket?” cries Grandfather Smallweed. “Isn’t the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon and his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come, then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it don’t concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I won’t have ’em disappear so quietly. I handed ’em over to my friend and solicitor, Mr Tulkinghorn; not to anybody else.”

“Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too,” says Mr Bucket.

“I don’t care for that. I want to know who’s got ’em. And I tell you what we want — what we all here want, Mr Bucket. We want more pains-taking and search-making into this murder. We know where the interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man.”

“Now I tell you what,” says Mr Bucket, instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, “I am damned if I am a going to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time, by any human being in creation. You want more pains-taking and search-making? You do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don’t know the right time to stretch it out, and put it on the arm that fired that shot?”

Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is that he makes no idle boast, that Mr Smallweed begins to apologize. Mr Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.

“The advice I give you is, don’t you trouble your head about the murder. That’s my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers; and I shouldn’t wonder if you was to read something about it before long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that’s all I’ve got to say to you on that subject. Now about