Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/53

Rh Even if I had not known him to be a robber of the orphan, his looks afforded every justification for his removal. He was a bulky, fat man, six feet high, with greasy, copper-colored, clean-shaven face, double chinned, hook nosed and thick lipped. All the baseness of the world shone from his little pig's eyes, so that a philanthropist, who had really the courage of his philanthropy, might easily have shot him at sight without a qualm.

He was easy to dog and we dogged hint Since the weather was fine, I even found it an exhilarating task, and filled with a sense of kinship with all the detectives famous in fact and fiction, we followed him to Waterloo Station, journeyed down to East Surbiton in the same train, and conducted him, at a distance, to his pretentious many-gabled villa. We watched over this till ten o'clock, and then, sure that he was domesticated for at least this night, we returned to town and supped with Chelubai. On the Wednesday and Thursday we did this, shod with our noiseless boots, with our beards and our sand-bags—we all went armed lest Chelubai's blow should fail—in our pockets. On the Friday, when Pudleigh came out of his office carrying a little black bag in his hand, he seemed to me to wear another air, a gay and jaunty air. He blew his nose in a swaggering way, walked to the Mansion House and took a white 'bus. It was a still