'Jimson is the boy!'
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.
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