Boggy here threw his mercurial eyes at the consul, and then at me, and then at my client. This had the desired effect.
“Never mind about the change. I don’t object to give 20l. (handing over the money) for the villain’s capture. You can let this good man have the balance,” said the gentleman from Liverpool.
Boggy, with glistening eye, and with triumphant mien, led the way. I followed with my companion.
We passed into and out of several mysterious offices. Our warrant and other papers were scrutinised with tedious minuteness. Boggy seemed at home, and at ease with the minor officials, and to have a becoming veneration for the big-wigs.
At length we quitted the head-quarters of the commissary, and our procession looked really formidable as we marched towards the Anglo-American Hotel. There were six gendarmes, a sergeant at their head, Boggy in their rear, and two Englishmen in the rear of the British consul’s Frenchman.
As we passed along the quay, we observed, not far from the Anglo-American Hotel, and with steam up, ready for her departure, a vessel bound for a distant Atlantic port.
“He is going away by dat ship, is he?” chuckled the Frenchman. “See, here he comes,” the lively man continued to exclaim.
He was quite right. There, at a few yards’ distance, was Mr. Abraham Driver, merchant, dealer, and chapman, late of Liverpool, an absconded bankrupt.
He was walking coolly down to the quay, smoking his cigar, and about to take his departure in the vessel we had noticed.
At a suggestion from Boggy, the sergeant arrested the English bankrupt. The creditor and the debtor exchanged a very few words, not of mutual compliment.