He flung out upon the business of finding a Jew who practised the transmutation of jewels into gold.
CHAPTER XII BUCKINGHAM’S HEROICS
Miss Sylvia Farquharson occupied very pleasant lodgings in Salisbury Court, procured for her upon her accession to fame and some measure of fortune by Betterton, who himself lived in a house opposite. And it was in the doorway of Betterton’s house that she first beheld the lean and wolfish face of Bates.
This happened on that same morning of Colonel Holles’s disappointment at the hands of Albemarle and subsequent tribulations at the hands of Mrs. Quinn.
Miss Farquharson was in need of certain dress materials which, she had been informed, were to be procured at a certain mercer’s in Cheapside. On this errand she came forth in the early afternoon of that day, and entered the sedan-chair that awaited her at her door. As the chairmen took up their burden it was that, looking from the unglazed window on her left across towards the house of her friend Betterton, she beheld that sly, evil face protruded from the shadows of the doorway as if to spy upon her. The sight of it instinctively chilled her a moment, and, again instinctively, she drew back quickly into the depths of the chair. A moment later she was laughing at her own foolish fancies, and upon that dismissed from her mind the memory of that evil-looking watcher.
It took her a full half-hour to reach her mercer’s at the sign of the Silver Angel in Cheapside, for the chairmen moved slowly. It would have been uncharitable to have urged them to go faster in the sweltering heat, and uncharitableness was not in Miss Farquharson’s nature. Also she was not pressed. And so she suffered herself to be borne in leisurely fashion along Paul’s Yard, whilst the preacher of doom on the steps was still haranguing that crowd which, as we know, ended by rising in mockery against him.
When at last her chair was set down at the door of the Silver Angel, she stepped out and passed in upon a business over which no woman hurries.
It may be well that Master Bates—who had come slinking after that chair with three tough bullies following some distance behind him, and another three following at a still greater distance—was something of a judge of feminine nature, and so came to the conclusion that it would perhaps be best part of an hour before Miss Farquharson emerged again. He had dark, wicked little eyes that observed a deal, and very wicked wits that were keenly alert. He had noted the little crowd about the steps of Paul’s, he had heard the burden of the preacher’s message, and those wicked inventive wits of his had perceived here a stage very opportunely set for the nasty little comedy which he was to contrive on His Grace of Buckingham’s behalf. It remained to bring the chief actor—the Duke, himself—at once within reasonable distance of the scene. Provided this could be contrived, all should now flow merrily as a peal of wedding-bells.