To throw out the irons and knock that dangerous knife out of his hand as he rose to attack me was the work of a second. The next minute I pinned him down in the bottom of the car, and prevented any further unpleasantness.
With the dawn of morning workpeople came over the Brighton Downs and assisted me to secure the Sunbeam and her poor demented owner.
His ascents into the air had finished, and the next occasion that I go up in a balloon with a friend I shall previously put him through a series of searching questions about love and jealousy, if he should happen to possess that much desirable acquisition—a young and pretty wife!
CHAPTER XIII.
MY TWO MATCHES, OR WATERLOO AVENGED.
A man with a history—Was it murder?— Clotilde avenges Waterloo— The winner of the Two Thousand makes a good hack.
It was difficult to say to what nationality Monsieur H—— belonged, as he spoke as many different languages as a Pole or a Russian, but probably Switzerland had the honour of producing the keen-eyed, wiry little man. He was not, even in his most friendly moments, very communicative about his antecedents, and, if that jade rumour did not belie him, he had good reasons for his reticence.
The gossips of the place, envious of his prosperity, alleged amongst other things against him, that he had been a waiter at a notorious night-house in Panton Street, Haymarket, and that on the occurrence of a drunken brawl he and a disreputable man about town called B—— threw a gentleman of good position either out of the window or down the stairs and killed him.
Murder was never meant, and death was, no doubt, the result of an accident. The police could not get to the bottom of the affair—as the people who were present kept out of the way—and the friends of the deceased did all they could to hush the matter up.