Gilead was constitutionally incapable of such spleen; yet even his invincible courtesy found a difficulty in keeping, so to speak, its equilibrium; and when, as it once happened, a little cold grimy hand, gripping a couple of match-boxes, was thrust across his path, he drove half-consciously upon the obstruction, and scattered it to the winds.
The act, repented as soon as done, had been due more to a sense of urgency than of irritation; but it had the effect of checking his somewhat excited career, and of restoring to him his moral balance. The fortunate urchin, having profited by it to the tune of a gold piece, dropped voicelessly behind.
The two men beating up Victoria Street, and across the cold comfort of Broad Sanctuary, headed for Westminster Bridge with set teeth. If they had attempted speech, the wind would have howled them down. It was a charging voice, a destructive terrorist, that shivered the lamps on the river into splinters of light, and hammered screeching on the doors and windows of the timid, and blew such an accumulation of human fuel into the public-house bars that they blazed and roared again.
It was for this reason, no doubt, that Lower Marsh exhibited, when they turned into it, a darkly depopulated aspect. Its traffic seemed shrunk to a minimum, the bones of its squalid ugliness were laid bare, the small grime of humanity that drifted down its pavements appeared of less account than the dust whirled about its lamp-posts. It was in the shadowy neutral ground between two of these that Gilead halted his companion, and pointed to the name of J. Jenniver written above their heads.
“It’s here,” he whispered—“and so is he.”
A weak perpendicular edge of light drawn upon the lowered blind of the shop seemed indeed to witness to the presence of someone in the back room, the door of which was patently ajar.
“I never doubted that he would be,” whispered Gilead, excusably vainglorious. “We’d better not delay. He’s vicious and suspicious. Now, officer! And be prepared for contingencies.”
“You won’t wait, then, sir, for the young woman’s arrival?”
“No, I think not. Better make sure of our bird in the hand. We shall find her more amenable to argument when once we’ve settled with her confederate. She’s little to blame, poor creature—his tool, no worse. Now.”
“Very well, sir. Stand by. It’s like he’ll take us for her.”