“Let the genman in, Charlie. Pal o’ ourn,” and my father ran huntedly into the room. He began an endless tale of a hackney coachman who had stood in front of the door of his coach to prevent his number being taken; of a crowd of caddee-smashers, who had hustled him and filched his purse. “Of course, I made a fight for it,” he said, “a damn good fight, considering. It’s in the blood. But the watch came, and, in short—on such an occasion as this there is no time for words—I passed the night in the watch-house. Many and many a night I passed there when I and Lord———But I am losing time.”
“You ain’t fit to walk the streets of London alone, sir,” the turnkey said.
My father gave him a corner of his narrow-lidded eyes. “My man,” he said, “I walked the streets with the highest in the land before your mother bore you in Bridewell, or whatever jail it was.”
“Oh, no offence,” the turnkey muttered.
I said, “Did you find Cowper, sir? Will he give evidence?”
“Jackie,” he said agitatedly, as if he were afraid of offending me, “he said you had filched his wife’s rings.”
That, in fact, was what Major Cowper had said—that I had dropped into their ship near Port Royal Heads, and had afterwards gone away with the pirates who had filched his wife’s rings. My father, in his indignation, had not even deigned to ask him for the address of Jamaica planters in London; and on his way back to find a solicitor he had come into contact with those street rowdies and the watch. He had only just come from before the magistrates.
A man with one eye poked his head suddenly from behind the Grand Jury door. He jerked his head in my direction.
“True bill against that ’ere,” he said, then drew his head in again.
“Jackie, boy,” my father said, putting a thin hand on my wrist, and gazing imploringly into my eyes, “I’m... I’m ... I can’t tell you how....”