CHAPTER XVI. MR. GREEN EXECUTES HIS WARRANT
Five days later, Mr. Caryll—whose recovery had so far progressed that he might now be said to be his own man again—came briskly up from Charing Cross one evening at dusk, to the house at the corner of Maiden Lane where Sir Richard Everard was lodged. He observed three or four fellows lounging about the corner of Chandos street and Bedford street, but it did not occur to him that from that point they could command Sir Richard's door—nor that such could be their object—until, as he swung sharply round the corner, he hurtled violently into a man who was moving in the opposite direction without looking whither he was going. The man stepped quickly aside with a murmured word of apology, to give Mr. Caryll the wall that he might pass on. But Mr. Caryll paused.
“Ah, Mr. Green!” said he very pleasantly. “How d'ye? Have ye been searching folk of late?”
Mr. Green endeavored to dissemble his startled expression in a grin that revealed his white teeth. “Ye can't forgive me that blunder, Mr. Caryll,” said he.
Mr. Caryll smiled fondly upon him. “From your manner I take it that on your side you practice a more Christian virtue. It is plain that you forgive me the sequel.”
Mr. Green shrugged and spread his hands. “You were in the right, sir; you were in the right,” he explained. “Those are the risks a man of my calling must run. I must suffer for my blunders.”
Mr. Caryll continued to smile. But that the light was failing, the spy might have observed a certain hardening in the lines of his mouth. “Here is a very humble mood,” said he. “It is like the crouch before the spring. In whom do you design to plant your claws?—yours and your friends yonder.” And he pointed with his cane across the street towards the loungers he had observed.
“My friends?” quoth Mr. Green, in a voice of disgust. “Nay, your honor! No friends of mine, ecod! Indeed, no!”
“No? I am at fault, then. Yet they look as if they might be bumbailiffs. 'Tis the kind ye herd with, is't not? Give you good-even, Mr. Green.” And he went on, cool and unconcerned, and turned in through the narrow doorway by the glover's shop to mount the stairs to Sir Richard's lodging.