“I’ll see to it, sir,” said I, and away I ran to the mews in Little Ryder Street, where my uncle stabled his horses. The groom was away, and I had to send a lad in search of him, while with the help of the livery-man I dragged the curricle from the coach-house and brought the two mares out of their stalls. It was half an hour, or possibly three-quarters, before everything had been found, and Lorimer was already waiting in Jermyn Street with the inevitable baskets, whilst my uncle stood in the open door of his house, clad in his long fawn-coloured driving-coat, with no sign upon his calm pale face of the tumult of impatience which must, I was sure, be raging within.
“We shall leave you, Lorimer,” said he. “We might find it hard to get a bed for you. Keep at her head, William! Jump in, nephew. Halloa, Warr, what is the matter now?”
The prizefighter was hastening towards us as fast as his bulk would allow.
“Just one word before you go, Sir Charles,” he panted. “I’ve just ’eard in my taproom that the four men I spoke of left for Crawley at one o’clock.”
“Very good, Warr,” said my uncle, with his foot upon the step.
“And the odds ’ave risen to ten to one.”
“Let go her head, William!”
“Just one more word, gov’nor. You’ll excuse the liberty, but if I was you I’d take my pistols with me.”
“Thank you; I have them.”
The long thong cracked between the ears of the leader, the groom sprang for the pavement, and Jermyn Street had changed for St. James’s, and that again for Whitehall with a swiftness which showed that the gallant mares were as impatient as their master. It was half-past four by the Parliament clock as we flew on to Westminster Bridge. There was the flash of water beneath us, and then we were between those two long dun-coloured lines of houses which had been the avenue which had led us to London. My uncle sat with tightened lips and a brooding brow. We had reached Streatham before he broke the silence.