“You’ve arrived,” said the man.
“Is this Hatton Garden?” shouted Dyke, as he sprang out of the cab.
The man said yes, and Dyke exploded with terrible force.
“Then, you infernal scoundrel, what do you mean by luring me into your cab and defrauding me of a fare when I was in Hatton Garden already and I had only a few steps to walk?”
“You wasn’t in Hatton Garden,” said the man. “You was facing it. I did ask you and you yelled I was to get on. I thought you knew.”
“No, you didn’t. You thought I was a stranger—you thought, because I didn’t know all the twists and turns of your senseless town you’d fleece me and make a fool of me—” And continuing the explosion, increasing it even, he said he would not pay the fare, not one penny of it, and he had a great mind to pull the driver off his seat and break every bone in his body.
Miss Verinder begged that the man might be paid. Gasping bystanders distressed her, the wrath of Dyke had thrown her into a flutter. “For my sake, Tony, pay him and be done with it.”
“For your sake? But the principle of the thing, Emmie. Oh, very well”; and he spoke now calmly and grandly to the cab-driver. “Because this lady wishes it, because this lady has interceded for you, you shall have your shilling. You shall have your—” He was feeling in his trousers pockets. But there was nothing there. He had given all his money to the flower-seller.
Miss Verinder opened her purse, and paid the cab-driver—a little more than his exact fare, in order to remove a perhaps unfavourable impression. Of course the cabdriver could not be expected to understand Anthony’s noble but explosive nature as she did.
“Thank you, dear,” she said, linking her arm in that of her hero and giving it an affectionate pressure. “Please dismiss all that from your mind—for my sake.”