At this proposal, my detective-fever suddenly cooled. "You don't want
me," I said. "What good can I do?"
"The longer I know you, Mr. Betteredge," said the Sergeant, "the more
virtues I discover. Modesty--oh dear me, how rare modesty is in this
world! and how much of that rarity you possess! If I go alone to the
cottage, the people's tongues will be tied at the first question I
put to them. If I go with you, I go introduced by a justly respected
neighbour, and a flow of conversation is the necessary result. It
strikes me in that light; how does it strike you?"
Not having an answer of the needful smartness as ready as I could have
wished, I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted to go
to.
On the Sergeant describing the place, I recognised it as a cottage
inhabited by a fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two grown-up
children, a son and a daughter. If you will look back, you will find
that, in first presenting Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I have
described her as occasionally varying her walk to the Shivering Sand, by
a visit to some friends of hers at Cobb's Hole. Those friends were the
Yollands--respectable, worthy people, a credit to the neighbourhood.
Rosanna's acquaintance with them had begun by means of the daughter, who
was afflicted with a misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts by
the name of Limping Lucy. The two deformed girls had, I suppose, a
kind of fellow-feeling for each other. Anyway, the Yollands and Rosanna
always appeared to get on together, at the few chances they had of
meeting, in a pleasant and friendly manner. The fact of Sergeant Cuff
having traced the girl to THEIR cottage, set the matter of my helping
his inquiries in quite a new light. Rosanna had merely gone where she
was in the habit of going; and to show that she had been in company with
the fisherman and his family was as good as to prove that she had been
innocently occupied so far, at any rate. It would be doing the girl
a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself to be
convinced by Sergeant Cuff's logic. I professed myself convinced by it
accordingly.
We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as
the light lasted.
On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out in
the boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on her
bed up-stairs. Good Mrs. Yolland received us alone in her kitchen. When
she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London, she
clapped a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table,
and stared as if she could never see enough of him.