The String of Pearls (1850), p. 52

is nothing on earth so delightfully refreshing, after a dusty and rather a long country walk, as to suddenly enter a well-kept and extremely verdant garden; and this was the case especially to the feelings of Colonel Jeffery, when he arrived at Lime Tree Lodge, the residence of Captain Rathbone. He met him with a most cordial and frank welcome—a welcome which he expected, but which was none the less delightful on that account; and, after sitting awhile with the family m the house, he and the captain strolled into the garden, and then Colonel Jeffery commenced his revelation. The captain, with very few interruptions, heard him to an end; and, when he concluded by saying—
"And now I am come to ask your advice upon all these matters the captain immediately replied, in his warm, off-hand manner—"
"I am afraid you won't find my advice of much importance; but I offer you my active co-operation in anything you think ought to be done or can be done in this affair, which, I assure you deeply interests me, and gives me the greatest possible impulse to exertion, you have but to command me in the matter, and I am completely at your disposal."
"I was quite certain you would say as much. But, notwithstanding the manner in which you shrink from giving an opinion, I am anxious to know what you really think with regard to what are, you will allow, most extraordinary circumstances."
"The most natural thing in the world," said Captain Rathbone, "at the first flush of the affair, seemed to be, that we ought to look for your friend Thornhill at the point where he disappeared."
"At the barber's in Fleet-street?"
"Precisely. Did he leave the barber, or did he not?"
"Sweeney Todd says that he left him, and proceeded down the street towards the city, in pursuance of a direction he had given him to Mr. Oakley, the spectacle-maker, and that he saw him get into some sort of disturbance at the end of the market; but to put against that, we have the fact of the dog remaining by the barber's door, and his refusing to leave it on any amount of solicitation. Now the very fact that a dog could act in such a way proclaims an amount of sagacity that seems to tell loudly against the presumption that such a creature could make any mistake."
"It does. What say you, now, to go into town to-morrow morning, and making a call at the barber's, without proclaiming we have any special errand, except to be shaved and dressed? Do you think he would know you again?"
"Scarcely, in plain clothes. I was in my undress uniform when I called with the captain of the Neptune, so that his impression of me must be of decidedly a military character; and the probability is, that he would not know me at all in the clothes of a civilian. I like the idea of giving a call at the barber's."
"Do you think your friend Thornhill was a man likely to talk about the valuable pearls he had in his possession?"
"Certainly not."
"I merely, ask you, because they might have offered a great temptation and if he has experienced any foul play at the hands of the barber, the idea or becoming possessed of such a valuable treasure might have been the inducement."
"I do not think it probable, but it has struck me that, if we obtain any information whatever of Thornhill, it will be in consequence of these very pearls. They are of great value, and not likely to be overlooked ; and yet, unless a customer be found for them, they are of no value at all ; and nobody buys jewels of that character but from the personal vanity of making, of course, some public display of them."
"That is true; and so, from hand to hand, we might trace those pearls until we come to the individual who must have had them from Thornhill himself, and