“What’s this?” he exclaimed, suddenly turning upon his heel, and facing the trio. “This gentleman drunk?”
“Drunk as Bacchis!” answered one of the men. “We’re tryin’ to get ’im home, an’ ha’ been at it for the best part o’ an hour.”
“Indeed!”
“Yis, sir. He’s had a drop too much, as ye see. He’s a friend of ours, and we don’t want the perlice to take him to the station.”
“Of course you don’t,” said the young sprig of Beechwood Park, now fully comprehending the case. “Well, that’s kind of you both, but, as I am also a friend of this gentleman, you had better leave him in my charge, and save yourselves any farther trouble. Do you agree to it?”
“Agree be blowed! What do you mean?”
“This!” shouted Henry, who could no longer restrain his indignation. “This!” he repeated, delivering a blow of his stout Buckinghamshire stick upon the head of one of the supporters—“and this!” he cried thrice in rapid succession, as the stick descended on the skull of the second scoundrel, and all three, garrotters and garrotted, sank together upon the pavement.
By the merest accident in the world, a policeman appeared upon the spot. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields there are no area safes, and a great scarcity of rabbit-pie. As a consequence, the guardians of the night may be seen occasionally upon their beat; and, as good-luck would have it, one, sauntering along Great Queen Street, heard the scuffle in the archway, and hastened towards the spot.
He came up in time to assist Henry Harding in securing the two garrotters, and stripping them of the spoils they had taken from the person of the stranger, of which they had already possessed themselves. All went together to the police-station, the stranger having by this time partially recovered from his intoxication—of chloroform—whence, in a cab, he was taken by Henry Harding to his own lodgings, and left there—with a promise on the part of his rescuer to return to him on the following day.