“Would you like to see what the operation of coining is, while my man is getting the lunch ready?” said the doctor. “It may be of use to me at the trial, if you can testify that I afforded you every facility for finding out anything you might want to know. Only mention my polite anxiety to make things easy and instructive from the very first, and I may get recommended to mercy. See here—this queer-looking machine, gentlemen (from which two of my men derive their nicknames), is what we call a Mill-and-Screw.”
He began to explain the machine with the manner and tone of a lecturer at a scientific institution. In spite of themselves, the officers burst out laughing. I looked round at Screw as the doctor got deeper into his explanations. The traitor was rolling his wicked eyes horribly at me. They presented so shocking a sight, that I looked away again. What was I to do next? The minutes were getting on, and I had not heard a word yet, through the peephole, on the subject of the reserve of Bow Street runners outside. Would it not be best to risk everything, and get away at once by the back of the house?
Just as I had resolved on venturing the worst, and making my escape forthwith, I heard the officers interrupt the doctor’s lecture.
“Your lunch is a long time coming,” said one of them.
“Moses is lazy,” answered the doctor; “and the Madeira is in a remote part of the cellar. Shall I ring again?”
“Hang your ringing again!” growled the runner, impatiently. “I don’t understand why our reserve men are not here yet. Suppose you go and give them a whistle, Sam.”
“I don’t half like leaving you,” returned Sam. “This learned gentleman here is rather a shifty sort of chap; and it strikes me that two of us isn’t a bit too much to watch him.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed Sam’s comrade, suspiciously.
A crash of broken crockery in the lower part of the house had followed that last word of the cautious officer’s speech. Naturally, I could draw no special inference from the sound; but, for all that, it filled me with a breathless interest and suspicion, which held me irresistibly at the peephole—though the moment before I had made up my mind to fly from the house.
“Moses is awkward as well as lazy,” said the doctor. “He has dropped the tray! Oh, dear, dear me! he has certainly dropped the tray.”