"Never mind what I said last night about the betting; what I say now is that you're not to leave the bar. Come upstairs, Sarah, and dress yourself, and let's be off."
Stack and Journeyman were waiting to speak to him. They had lost heavily over old Ben and didn't know how they'd pull through; and the whole neighbourhood was in the same plight; the bar was filled with gloomy faces.
And as William scanned their disconcerted faces—clerks, hair-dressers, waiters from the innumerable eating houses—he could not help thinking that perhaps more than one of them had taken money that did not belong to them to back Ben Jonson. The unexpected disaster had upset all their plans, and even the wary ones who had a little reserve fund could not help backing outsiders, hoping by the longer odds to retrieve yesterday's losses. At two the bar was empty, and William waited for Esther and Sarah to return from Mile End. It seemed to him that they were a long time away. But Mile End is not close to Soho; and when they returned, between four and five, he saw at once that they had been unsuccessful. He lifted up the flap in the counter and all three went into the parlour.
"He left Milward Square yesterday," Esther said. "Then we went to another address, and then to another; we went to all the places Sarah had been to with him, but no tidings anywhere."
Sarah burst into tears. "There's no more hope," she said. "I'm done for; they'll come and take me away. How much do you think I'll get? They won't give me ten years, will they?"
"I can see nothing else for you to do," said Esther, "but to go straight back to your people and tell them the whole story, and throw yourself on their mercy."
"Do you mean that she should say that she pawned the plate to get money to back a horse?"
"Of course I do."
"It will make the police more keen than ever on the betting houses."
"That can't be helped."