“Now,” began Lightwood, “what’s your name?”
“Why, there you’re rather fast, Lawyer Lightwood,” he replied, in a remonstrant manner. “Don’t you see, Lawyer Lightwood? There you’re a little bit fast. I’m going to earn from five to ten thousand pound by the sweat of my brow; and as a poor man doing justice to the sweat of my brow, is it likely I can afford to part with so much as my name without its being took down?”
Deferring to the man’s sense of the binding powers of pen and ink and paper, Lightwood nodded acceptance of Eugene’s nodded proposal to take those spells in hand. Eugene, bringing them to the table, sat down as clerk or notary.
“Now,” said Lightwood, “what’s your name?”
“But further precaution was still due to the sweat of this honest fellow’s brow.
“I should wish, Lawyer Lightwood,” he stipulated, “to have that T’other Governor as my witness that what I said I said. Consequent, will the T’other Governor be so good as chuck me his name and where he lives?”
Eugene, cigar in mouth and pen in hand, tossed him his card. After spelling it out slowly, the man made it into a little roll, and tied it up in an end of his neckerchief still more slowly.
“Now,” said Lightwood, for the third time, “if you have quite completed your various preparations, my friend, and have fully ascertained that your spirits are cool and not in any way hurried, what’s your name?”
“Roger Riderhood.”
“Dwelling-place?”
“Lime’us Hole.”
“Calling or occupation?”
Not quite so glib with this answer as with the previous two, Mr Riderhood gave in the definition, “Waterside character.”
“Anything against you?” Eugene quietly put in, as he wrote.
Rather baulked, Mr Riderhood evasively remarked, with an innocent air, that he believed the T’other Governor had asked him summa’t.
“Ever in trouble?” said Eugene.
“Once.” (Might happen to any man, Mr Riderhood added incidentally.)
“On suspicion of—?”
“Of seaman’s pocket,” said Mr Riderhood. “Whereby I was in reality the man’s best friend, and tried to take care of him.”
“With the sweat of your brow?” asked Eugene.
“Till it poured down like rain,” said Roger Riderhood.
Eugene leaned back in his chair, and smoked with his eyes negligently turned on the informer, and his pen ready to reduce him to more writing. Lightwood also smoked, with his eyes negligently turned on the informer.