England -- Fiction; Impostors and imposture -- Fiction; Love stories; Mystery fiction
At first, Philip was afraid that the man had seen him, and was coming
straight for him; he dived down, and lay flat, scarcely daring to
breathe. But the stranger, who evidently knew the place well, came on
steadily, until he stood within a few yards of the spot where Philip
crouched; then he stopped, and looked straight across at the distant
chimneys of Chater Hall. As he stood there, Philip found himself
watching the man with an eagerness greater than he would have felt at
the appearance of any chance stranger; for he knew the face of this
man. Once again, he seemed to stand at the entrance to a little court,
leading down to the river, at Woolwich; once again, to see a man dash
past him, and to catch a glimpse of a face—gone in an instant, and
seemingly forgotten—but well enough remembered now. Again, too, he
seemed to stand on the terrace at Chater Hall, on that night of the
burglary, striving to peer in through a window; to see the curtain
suddenly flung back, and the room bright with lights, and that same
face staring out at him. Small wonder that his heart beat heavily, as
he lay crouched among the bushes, looking up at the man above him.
The stranger, for his part, seemed to hesitate what to do; made a step
forward more than once, as if to go boldly across the road, and up the
path to the house before him; and as often stopped, and turned about,
and waited where he was.
Philip Chater was beginning to wonder what was to happen, and was half
resolved—in the wild hurry of the thoughts which came crowding upon
him—to spring out, and confront the man, when another figure seemed to
spring almost from the grass near at hand, and to make rapidly towards
the first comer. Philip, raising his head quickly, no sooner caught
sight of this second man, than he dropped down flat again, at the
bottom of the ditch.
It was Inspector Tokely; and that gentleman came forward with a
threatening aspect, and stopped within about a yard of the other, who
was much taller than himself.
“Mr. Ogledon, I believe,” said the Inspector, grimly; and Philip almost
jumped out of his place again, at the mention of that name.
“Well—what of it?” was the surly reply; and it almost seemed to the
listening man as though the speaker looked Tokely up and down
superciliously as he spoke.
“What of it, sir!” cried the other, fiercely. “This of it, Mr.
Ogledon—that you have insulted and maltreated the Law, as personified
in me—in _me_, sir! That I have been lured into your presence, and,
while in the execution of my duty, have been struck on a tender
spot—to wit, the head—by a debauched companion of yours, and with a
hard and heavy substance—to wit, a decanter; such assault being
committed in order to delay, frustrate, postpone, or prevent the arrest
of a certain person against whom I held a warrant. Damme, sir—what
have you to say to that?” exclaimed the little man, suddenly losing his
legal technicalities in an outburst of fury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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