"I am Sir Richard Blunt."
Todd groaned and staggered. The officers would have let him sit down in the shaving chair for a moment or two to recover from the shock his mind had sustained by his capture, but when he found that it was the shaving chair he was led to, he shuddered, and in a wailing voice, said—
"No—no! not there—not there! Anywhere but there. I dare not sit there!"
"It isn't worth while sitting at all," said Crotchet. "I'm blowed if I ain't all crumpled up in a blessed mummy by being in that cupboard so jolly long. All my joints is a-going crinkley-crankley."
Todd looked in the face of Sir Richard Blunt, and in a faint voice spoke—
"I—I don't feel very well. There's a little drop of cordial medicine that I often take in my coat pocket. You see I can't get at it, my hands being manacled. I only want to take a drop to comfort me."
"Get it out, Crotchet," said Sir Richard.
"Here ye is," said Crotchet, as he produced a little bottle, with a pale straw-coloured liquid in, from Todd's pocket.
"Give it to me. Oh, give it to me," said Todd. "I will thank you much. It will recover me. Give it to me!"
"No, Todd," said Sir Richard, as he took the little bottle and put it in his own pocket. "I do not intend, if I can help it, to permit you to evade the law by poisoning yourself."