“The time is not yet for you to fly, my lad,” says I; “you know very well that I have decided to hold you here until I can have you carried privily to London, and then shipped straightway from Deptford to the Continent. But as to the clipping of the Captain’s wings, how shall you set about it?”
“There is a way, you can depend upon it,” he replied with a significance that startled me; “though to be sure ’tis not one that’s very gentle.”
“What do you mean, sir?” says I, while a light came in his eyes and made them shine like meteors.
“Well, I mean just this,” says he, “for me to fly from this house to-day is certain death, as you remind me. But it is equally impossible for me to be here abiding now that the Captain’s so alert. ’Twill not be advisable for this house to hold us both another day. Therefore one of us must go; and if the name of that one does not happen to be Dare, then I think it’s Grantley.”
“A very pregnant and luminous piece of reasoning,” says I, “but provided it is Grantley, how are you going to set the man in motion?”
“You think the man will need a spur?” says he.
“I do, indeed,” says I, “and one both sharp and covert.”
“I have here the very thing,” says he. Upon the word he fumbled in his skirts, and presently produced a little leather case therefrom. Plucking off the top, he showed me that a small venomous stiletto lay twinkling in it. As you may suppose I took several seconds to recover my breath, then cried:
“What, you bloody-handed rogue, have you murder in your mind?”
“Some may call it murder,” he meekly said, “and some may call it sin, and as I’m not a learned man I shan’t dispute ’em. But the pith of the affair is this. If Grantley can contrive to rattle the first blow in among my ribs, then I shall be a corpse. Yet, on the other hand, if I can get the first home I shan’t need to strike again.”