“Couldn’t get a trap, sir, anywheres; but I managed to get a fly—and it’s at the door.”
“All right—a fly will do better than anything; we’ll have him safer there than elsewhere.”
The man with the melancholy visage suddenly emitted a most extraordinary sound—a sound which, had it moved any part of his face in any way, might have been described as a laugh; but, as his countenance appeared as melancholy after it as before, it did not seem possible that it arose from mirth.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tokely, turning towards the man.
“Nuffink, guv’nor. It’s rather a nasty corf, that ketches me now and agin,” replied the man.
Philip was thrust into the vehicle, together with the man of the melancholy countenance—who stuck close to him, and even held his arm, as though afraid of losing him—and Tokely. When one of the watchers suggested that he might want other assistance, in view of the prisoner proving refractory, Tokely admitted that it might be better for one of them to get on the box with the driver; but, immediately afterwards, thinking apparently that such extra precaution might be put down to cowardice on his part, he countermanded the order; so that the prisoner drove off with only the melancholy-looking man and Tokely inside, and the driver on the box.
Philip’s mind was chiefly occupied with wonder as to what was going to happen. That the melancholy man was an emissary of Captain Quist, he did not doubt; at the same time, lest he should alarm the Inspector, and so frustrate any plan which might have been formed for his own rescue, he sat still in a corner of the fly, apparently in a sulky humour, but really alert and watchful.
The moment came at last. A shrill whistle sounded somewhere out of the blackness of the night. It was answered, in an instant, with deafening intensity, by the melancholy man, who on the instant leapt upon Tokely, and seemed to be doing something extraordinary, in the midst of a violent struggle, with that gentleman’s arms. In less time than it takes to tell, a figure appeared, through the glass of one window, racing along beside the vehicle; the door was wrenched open, and Philip was tumbled out, with the melancholy man literally on top of him, into the road; the door was slammed, and the horse, maddened by a cut across his haunches from a long whip, fairly took the bit in his teeth, and dashed straight down the road like a racer. The last that Philip saw of the vehicle, as he sat up in the road and looked after it, was it swaying from side to side of the road, while the unfortunate Tokely (whose arms had been pinioned behind him with true sailor-like adroitness) had his head thrust out of one window, and was vainly shouting to the driver.
Then, a familiar voice broke upon Philip’s ear, and Captain Quist, looking ruefully at a tall silk hat, which lay battered in the roadway, and on which some one must have fallen, muttered a familiar phrase.
“That comes,” said the Captain, “of gettin’ into bad company.”