A wholesale flight followed. Never were horses in such request in London, and never did their hire command such prices, and daily now at Ludgate, Aldgate, over London Bridge, and by every other exit from the City was there that same congestion of departing horsemen, pedestrians, coaches, and carts that had earlier been seen at Charing Cross. A sort of paralysis settled upon London life and the transaction of its business by the rapidly thinning population. In the suburbs it was reported that men were dying like flies at the approach of winter.
Preachers of doom multiplied, and they were no longer mocked or pelted with offal, but listened to in awe. And so reduced in ribaldry were the prentices of London that they even suffered a madman to run naked through the streets about Paul’s with a cresset of live coals upon his head, screaming that the Lord would purge with fire the City of its sins.
But Colonel Holles was much too obsessed by his own affairs to be deeply concerned with the general panic. When at last he heard of the exodus from Whitehall, he bestirred himself to action, from fear lest His Grace of Buckingham—in whom his last hope now rested—should depart with the others. Therefore he ventured to recall himself in a letter to the Duke. For two days he waited in vain for a reply, and then, as despondency was settling upon him, came an added blow to quicken this into utter and absolute despair.
He returned after dusk one evening from an expedition in the course of which he had sold at last that jewel which had now served whatever purpose he had fondly imagined that Fate intended by it, so that its conversion into money was the last use to which it could be put. He had made an atrociously bad bargain, for these were not times—the buyer assured him—in which folk were thinking of adornments. As he reëntered the inn, Banks, the landlord, approached him, and drew him on one side out of sight and earshot of the few who lingered in the common room.
“There’s been two men here seeking you, sir.”
Holles started in eagerness, his mind leaping instantly to the Duke of Buckingham. Observing this, the landlord, grave-faced, shook his head. He was a corpulent, swarthy man of a kindly disposition, and it may be that this wistful guest of his had commanded instinctively his sympathy. He leaned closer, lowering his voice, although there was hardly the need.
“They was messengers from Bow Street,” he said. “They didn’t say so. But I know them. They asked a mort o’ questions. How long you had been in my house, and whence you came and what you did. And they ordered me at parting to say nothing about this to you. But....” The landlord shrugged his great shoulders, and curled his lip in contempt of that injunction. His dark eyes were on the Colonel, and he observed the latter’s sudden gravity. Holles was not exercised by any speculations on the score of the business that had brought those minions of justice. His association with Tucker and Rathbone had been disclosed, possibly at the trial of the former, who had just been convicted and sentenced to be hanged and quartered. And he had no single doubt that, if he once came within the talons of the law, his own conviction would follow, despite his innocence.
“I thought, sir,” the landlord was saying, “that I’d warn you. So that if so be you’ve done aught to place yourself outside the law, ye shouldn’t stay for them to take you. I don’t want to see you come to no harm.”
Holles collected himself. “Mister Banks,” he said, “ye’re a good friend, and I thank you. I have done nothing. Of that I can assure you. But appearances may be made to damn me. The unfortunate Mr. Tucker was an old friend of mine....”
The landlord’s sigh interrupted him. “Aye, sir, I thought it might be that, from something they let fall. That’s why I take the risk of telling you. In God’s name, sir, be off whiles ye may.”