“Those words,—‘high-tone gemmleman.’ Whom did you ever hear use them?”
“Yah, yah! Wall, Peek, those words I got from Kunnle Delancy Hyde.”
“Where,—where and when did you get them?”
“Bress yer, Peek, jes now,—not two minutes ago,—dar in the gallery whar the Kunnle’s walkin’ up and down.”
Peek smiled significantly at Vance, and the latter, approaching the deputy who had not yet been released from custody, remarked: “You have a man named Hyde confined there.”
“Yes, Delancy Hyde. The scoundrel stole the funds given to him to pay recruiting expenses.”
“For which I desire to thank him. Bring him out.”
“But, sir, you wouldn’t—”
“Five minutes, Mr. Deputy, I give you, a second time, in which to obey my orders. If Mr. Delancy Hyde isn’t forthcoming before this second-hand goes round five times, one of your friends here shall have the opportunity of succeeding you in office, and you shall be deposited where the wicked cease from troubling.”
The deputy was far from being agreeably struck at the prospect of quitting the company of the wicked. But for them his vocation would be wanting. And so he nodded to a subordinate, and in three minutes out stalked the astonishing figure of Colonel Delancy Hyde, wearing a dirty woollen Scotch cap, and attired in the coarsest costume of the jail.