In another instant he was outside the house; and closing the door behind him, he locked it so as to prevent the Doctor and his myrmidons from instituting an immediate pursuit.
“Be Jasus! and this is the rummest lar-r-k I iver had in all my life!” ejaculated Captain O’Blunderbuss, panting for breath.
“Come with us, gentlemen,” said Lord William, hastily addressing that gallant officer and Frank Curtis: “you have rendered us a signal service—and we must know you better. We have likewise certain necessary explanations to give you relative to the strange scene in which you took so generous a part. But come away directly—there is not a moment to be lost—a hue and cry may be raised!”
“Be the power-rs! and is it bur-r-glars ye are?” cried the Captain, somewhat regretting the precipitation with which he had mixed himself up in the late affray.
“No—no: far from that!” exclaimed Lord William, laughing heartily at the idea. “But let us get as quickly as we can out of this neighbourhood.”
And away the four gentlemen scampered into the Cambridge Road, down which they sped until they reached Mile End, where they fortunately found a night-cab waiting for a fare.
Into the vehicle they got; and Lord William Trevelyan exclaimed, as an instruction to the driver, “Park Square, Regent’s Park!”
Away the cab went; and both Captain O’Blunderbuss and Frank Curtis, who had heard the aristocratic address thus given, were seized with an insatiable curiosity to learn who their new acquaintances could be.
CHAPTER CXC.
A SCENE IN A CAB.
“Ginthlemen,” exclaimed the gallant Irishman, “I mane to inthroduce myself and frind to ye without any more bother or pother. My frind, then, ginthlemen, is Misther Frank Cur-r-tis—discinded from a fine family, and once possissed of large estates, all of which, be Jasus! he’s managed to ate up as clane as if dirthy acres were plum-pudding. My name, ginthlemen, is Capthain O’Bluntherbuss, of Bluntherbuss Park, Connemar-r-ra—where I shall be delighted to see ye any time ye may be afther visiting Ould Ireland and I’m at home.”