It was striking twelve when, exhausted by the dreary task of enduring three hours’ expectancy, he rose to depart, having fixed his eye upon a lady’s black leather travelling bag, which seemed to be worth taking away He advanced towards it with the air of one who was about to take possession of his own property, and hurry away with it. He had his hand upon the handle, and was in the act of making a plunge at the doorway, when he felt himself seized by the wrist, and a voice said sharply in his ear—
“Put down that bag!”
He dropped it instanter, and turned to apologise for his “mistake,” to as he presumed an officer, but found that he was in the grip of Nathan Gomer.
His jaw dropped, he uttered a kind of hysterical screeching laugh, and gasped out something respecting being made to wait so long without having anything to amuse him, and, at the same time, he felt inwardly convinced that the dwarf had been hiding somewhere ever since nine o’clock to have the opportunity of pouncing upon him in the very act in which he was caught.
Nathan made no allusion to the discrepancy between the hour he had named to meet Chewkle, and that at which he appeared; he merely said—
“Follow me!”
He quitted his hold of Chewkle as he spoke, and made his way out of the station into the street, and Chewkle followed him at the same rapid pace.
Nathan made his way to a small tavern in the vicinity, and diving into a low, dark, room, motioned to Chewkle, who was at his heels—with an unpleasant suspicion that a policeman was bringing up the rear—to take a seat.
He ordered Chewkle a stiff glass of a compound called, by a most elastic stretch of the imagination, brandy and water, and when they were alone, and Chewkle actively engaged in disposing of his powerful beverage, Nathan briefly told him that he had decided to take no steps in the matter, upon which he, Chewkle, had, on the previous evening, visited him.
“You’ve made up your mind to that, eh?” said Chewkle, eyeing him steadfastly.