"Only this—that unless you can see your way to putting things straight for me, I'm hanged if I take the trouble to seal you up in that bottle!"
"How am I to put things straight for thee?" cried Fakrash, peevishly.
"If you could make all those people entirely forget that affair in the Guildhall, you can make my friends forget the brass bottle and everything connected with it, can't you?"
"There would be no difficulty in that," Fakrash admitted.
"Well, do it—and I'll swear to seal you up in the bottle exactly as if you had never been out of it, and pitch you into the deepest part of the Thames, where no one will ever disturb you."
"First produce the bottle, then," said Fakrash, "for I cannot believe but that thou hast some lurking guile in thy heart."
"I'll ring for my landlady and have the bottle brought up," said Horace. "Perhaps that will satisfy you? Stay, you'd better not let her see you."
"I will render myself invisible," said the Jinnee, suiting the action to his words. "But beware lest thou play me false," his voice continued, "for I shall hear thee!"
"So you've come in, Mr. Ventimore?" said Mrs. Rapkin, as she entered. "And without the furrin gentleman? I was surprised, and so was Rapkin the same, to see you ridin' off this morning in the gorgious chariot and 'osses, and dressed up that lovely! 'Depend upon it,' I says to Rapkin, I says, 'depend upon it, Mr. Ventimore'll be sent for to Buckinham Pallis, if it ain't Windsor Castle!'"