“You never said you were familiar with the Court, sir!” The man in the plum-colored cloak was the picture of polite indignation. “But, ods my life, sir! this is a very grave matter.”
Justice Pretyman thought so, too. At least, his perspiring red face belied him if he did not.
“How I wish, sir,” said the man in the plum-colored cloak, “you had had the grace to make yourself more explicit. This lady is a bad one to cross, as all the world very well knows.”
“Yes, sir, I am aware of that,” said Justice Pretyman, beginning already to wish himself well out of the affair.
The richly caparisoned figure of William Kemp emerged with slow dignity from the tavern interior. He bent to the ear of the man in the plum-colored cloak. A good deal of confidential whispering followed, of which Justice Pretyman could only catch the ominous words, “Her Grace.”
But it was the man in the plum-colored cloak who addressed the uneasy magistrate.
“The fact of the matter is, sir,” he said, “this lady does not remember your name, but she hopes she may remember your face. She is not unwilling to grant you an audience of five minutes, but—strictly between ourselves—if you will take the advice of a friend, you will think twice before you run any risk of incurring her august displeasure.”
Justice Pretyman’s mind certainly seemed to recognize the wisdom of this sage counsel. And the result of a very little deliberation on his part was that he gathered his men and made off down the street with the least possible delay, leaving the members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Company to enjoy the triumph of their audacity.
To be sure, they little knew on how slender a thread it hung. Not ten yards from them, during the whole time in which this comedy had been played, a man stood marking sourly every phase of the proceedings. He could have undone them with a word.
The word, however, was not spoken. Grisewood judged the hour to be not yet. Still, he had marked very closely all that had passed. And he had been at pains to make himself fully acquainted with the matter in all its details. There and then, he could have laid his finger on the man these blundering rustics sought. But that would not have suited his purpose at the moment. For he was too astute not to realize the immense advantage his knowledge gave him, and far too cunning not to be fully determined to take some high profit out of it.