He jerked his thumb towards the open door. Mrs. Lamb looked at him and at the others. Apparently what she saw forced her to the conclusion that what she called "the game" was "up". She brought Mr. McTavish's malacca cane on to a writing-table with a resounding thwack.
"You couple of thieves! I'll wring your necks for you yet before I've done!"
She dashed the stick upon the floor and went, the clerks treading on each others' toes in their anxiety to give her as much room as she required.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
SOLICITOR AND CLIENT
A pseudo-historical utterance was paraphrased by Mr. Luker when the lady joined him in the street without.
"It may have been magnificent, but it wasn't war."
It is possible that Mrs. Lamb knew very little about the charge at Balaclava. It is certain that she had never heard of the phrase with which the critical French general has been credited. And she was in a red-hot temper, so that in any case she was in no mood to appreciate her legal adviser's recondite allusions. The lady's own remark was idiomatic in the extreme.
"Luker, I'd like to knock your head clean off your shoulders. If it hadn't been for you I'd have got all the ready I wanted out of that couple of cripples, or----"
"Or you'd have been on your road to the lock-up. There's no 'or' about it; if it hadn't been for me you would have been. My dear Isabel----"