It was into Roupel-street that Jack Rily conducted Mrs. Mortimer; and when he had introduced her to a small but well furnished parlour, with a bed-chamber communicating by means of folding-doors, he produced a bottle of brandy, saying, “Now let us drink to our happy meeting this day!”
Filling two glasses with the potent liquor, he handed one to the old woman, who swallowed the contents greedily: for she felt that she stood in need of a stimulant.
“Now, my beautiful tiger-cat,” exclaimed the Doctor, as he drew down the blind over the window, “I am about to subject you to a little ceremony which may be perhaps looked upon as the least thing uncourteous; but it must be accomplished all the same. So don’t let us have any bother about it.”
Thus speaking, he approached the cupboard whence he had taken the brandy, and drawing forth a huge clasp-knife, he touched a spring which made the blade fly open and remain fixed as if it were a dagger.
“You do not mean to hurt me?” exclaimed the old woman, now becoming terribly alarmed—so much so, that she sank exhausted into a chair, while her looks were fixed appealingly on the man’s countenance.
“Not unless you grow obstreperous or have any of your nonsense,” said Jack. “I love you too well to harm you,” he added, with a leer that made him more hideously ugly than ever: “but I must have my own way all the same. So just be so kind as to place upon the table the Bank-notes which you have got in the bosom of your gown. It is but fair that I should have a wife who can bring me a dowry—and you must leave it to my generosity,” he went on to say, with a chuckling laugh, “how much I shall settle upon you afterwards.”
While he was thus speaking, Mrs. Mortimer rapidly revolved in her mind all the chances that were for or against her at that moment. Were she to scream and attempt resistance, could she succeed in alarming the neighbourhood before the miscreant would have plunged his dagger into her?—or, indeed, would he have recourse to such an extreme measure at all? These questions she at once decided against herself; and, reverting to her former project of affecting obedience, she thrust her hand into her bosom, dexterously separated a couple of the notes from the rest of the bundle, and threw those two upon the table.
Jack Rily instantly snatched them up; and when he perceived that they were for a thousand pounds each, he could scarcely contain his joy.
Flinging the terrible clasp-knife on the floor, he rushed upon the old woman, who was seized with too sudden and too profound a terror to permit her even to give utterance to the faintest ejaculation—for she thought that he intended to murder her: but her cruel apprehensions fled in another moment when the loathsome monster, throwing his arms about her neck, began to embrace and fondle her as if she were a blooming beauty of seventeen instead of a hideous harridan upwards of sixty. Nevertheless, old and polluted as she was, and inured to all circumstances of disgust as her term of transportation had rendered her, she revolted with a sickening sensation from the pawings and caresses of the hare-lipped wretch who had thus enfolded her in his horrible embrace. She therefore struggled to rid herself of him—to escape from his arms: but he, almost maddened with the joy which the sight of the bank-notes had raised up in his breast, hugged her only the more tightly in proportion as her resistance became the more desperate.