“Pray, who are you, sir?” demanded Leegh, throwing up his head.
“Ask your companion there,” replied Ran with a wave of his hand toward the panic-stricken object in the armchair.
“Hay!” exclaimed Leegh, turning to his patron. “What in the dev—what on earth does all this mean? Who are all these people?”
Gentleman Geff opened his mouth, gasped, rolled his eyes and sank into silence.
“Can’t you speak, man? What the dev—what is the matter with you? And what is all this infer—this confusion about?” angrily demanded Leegh.
Gentleman Geff gasped two or three times, rolled his eyes frightfully and replied:
“It is the day of judgment! And the dead—the murdered dead—have risen to bear witness against me!—have left their graves to cry ‘blood for blood’!” he shrieked; and then his eyes stared and became fixed, his jaw fell and his face blanched.
“Poor idiot!” exclaimed Mr. Leegh in extreme disgust. “I never saw his so drunk as this. If he goes it at this pace he will soon come to the end of life. I find I must take command here and clear the house. Have I your authority to act for you, sister?” he inquired in a whisper of the woman on his arm.
“Yes—yes,” she faltered faintly; “but take me first to a chair or sofa. I feel as if about to faint. Oh, what does is all mean?”
“It means that our friend here,” he replied, pointing to the collapsed criminal in the chair, “has delirium tremens. And ‘has ’em bad,’ as the old costermonger used to say of his cousin,” he added as he placed his sister in a large, cushioned armchair, into which she sank exhausted.