Passing in front of the Exchange, and up Cornhill, they turned into Birchin Lane. There Jack Rily hesitated for an instant which way to proceed: but suddenly recollecting that in a little passage to the left there was a public-house called the Bengal Arms, he said, “There’s a crib here where they sell capital ale.”
“Let’s have some,” cried Vitriol Bob. “You go on fust—the place is too narrer for us both.”
“No—you go first,” said the Doctor.
“In this way then,” responded Vitriol Bob: and stepping nimbly in front of his companion, he turned round and walked backwards along the passage until it suddenly grew wider opposite the door of the Bengal Arms.
Jack Rily laughed at this manœuvre: but he was in reality disappointed—for had Vitriol Bob acted with less precaution, he would have assuredly received the whole length of the Doctor’s formidable knife in his back, ere he had proceeded half way up the passage.
“We’ll go into the parlour here,” said Jack, “and have some bread and cheese. I’m hungry.”
“So am I,” observed Vitriol Bob, in a dry, laconic tone which denoted the terrible determination that inspired the man’s mind,—a determination never to part from his companion until one of them should be no more!
There was something awful—something frightfully revolting and hideously appalling in the circumstance of those two miscreants thus wandering about together in a manner that appeared amicable enough to all who beheld them,—two wretches possessing the hearts of fiends and the external ugliness of monsters,—two incarnate demons capable of any turpitude, however black the dye!
CHAPTER CCIII.
THE BENGAL ARMS.—RENEWED WANDERINGS.
The parlour at the Bengal Arms is—or at least was at the time whereof we are writing—a long, low, dingy room, very dark in the day-time and indifferently lighted in the evening. It is always filled with a motley assembly of guests; and ale is the beverage most in request—while to one who indulges in a cigar, at least ten patronise the unaffected enjoyment of the clay-pipe.