CHAPTER XI. The Maestro Jimson

Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield having announced his intention to stay in the

neighbourhood of Maidenhead, what more probable than that the Maestro

Jimson should turn his mind toward Padwick? Near this pleasant riverside

village he remembered to have observed an ancient, weedy houseboat lying

moored beside a tuft of willows. It had stirred in him, in his careless

hours, as he pulled down the river under a more familiar name, a certain

sense of the romantic; and when the nice contrivance of his story was

already complete in his mind, he had come near pulling it all down

again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce a chapter in

which Richard Skill (who was always being decoyed somewhere) should

be decoyed on board that lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the American

desperado Gin Sling. It was fortunate he had not done so, he reflected,

since the hulk was now required for very different purposes.

Jimson, a man of inconspicuous costume, but insinuating manners,

had little difficulty in finding the hireling who had charge of the

houseboat, and still less in persuading him to resign his care. The rent

was almost nominal, the entry immediate, the key was exchanged against a

suitable advance in money, and Jimson returned to town by the afternoon

train to see about dispatching his piano.

'I will be down tomorrow,' he had said reassuringly. 'My opera is waited

for with such impatience, you know.'

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The Wrong Box