No one seemed to care, though, to follow figures that were evidently well-known, and so great was the attention bestowed upon them, that little, so far as he could see, fell to the share of Sir Francis and himself.
They soon reached the shop of Mr D. Wragg, the shutters of which natural history emporium were up, but both side and shop doors were wide open, closing after them, though, by invisible agency, as it appeared, until Harry turned to find that, springing as it were from that invisible region they are said so much to affect when wanted, a couple of policemen were at his elbow, whose duty it had doubtless been to close the portals against the curious crowd, certain to collect as soon as it was bruited abroad that there was “a case on” at the house of “Mr D. Wragg, naturalist.”
Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Six.
Not his Castle.
“Hullo! I say! what’s all this here about?” cried a familiar voice, and D. Wragg began to jerk himself fiercely into the shop. “Don’t you make no mistake. What! hullo! eh! I say!” he exclaimed, with a grin of delight taking the place of his surprise; “what! my lovely Jack Screwby! Nabbed at last?”
“No, I ain’t nabbed at last neither, Muster D. Wragg,” sneered the gentleman addressed; “and, as they says to me wunst—well, more ’n wunst, if you like,” he growled, as he caught the sergeant’s eye fixed upon him—“as they says to me, says they, ‘Don’t you be so jolly free with your tongue, ’cos what you says now may be used as evidence agen you.’”
D. Wragg’s features twitched furiously as he turned up the gas, and then, for the first time, he caught sight of Harry Clayton, and jerked violently, to the great delight of Screwby, who stood grinning and rubbing his hands, thoroughly enjoying the discomfiture of his enemy.
“Now, don’t you make no mistake, sir,” exclaimed D. Wragg; “the dog ain’t here this time, and I ain’t seen it, as I’ll take my Bible oath on it. There ain’t neither a bird, nor a hanimal, nor nothink o’ no kind as ain’t mine, and paid for down on the nail; so don’t you make no mistake now, come! You can do as you like, you know; only mind this here—there’s law for me, as well as law for you. You can think as I’ve got the dorg, if you like; only ’spectable houses o’ business ain’t to be entered at all times without things being made square.”