The Corinthian

He picked it up, shook out its folds, and gave it to her. “Don’t you go leaving things about in common taprooms!” he said austerely. “There’s plenty of files—ah, even in these quiet parts!—would be glad to get their dabblers on to a good toge like that.”

“Oh yes! Thank you! I’ll take it upstairs!” said Pen, glad of an opportunity to escape.

“You couldn’t do better,” approved Jimmy. “Then we’ll have a bit of food, and though I don’t hold with harmen in general—which is to say, with Law-officers, young shaver—why, I’m a peaceable man, and if any such be wishful to search me, they’re welcome.”

He strolled into the parlour, with the air of one whose conscience is clean, and Pen hurried off upstairs, to tap urgently on Sir Richard’s door.

His voice called to her to come in, and she entered to find him putting the finishing touches to his cravat. He met her eyes in the mirror, and said: “Well, brat?”

“Sir, we must leave this place instantly!” said Pen impetuously. “We are in the greatest danger!”

“Why? Has your aunt arrived?” asked Sir Richard, preserving his calm.

“Worse!” Pen declared. “A Bow Street Runner!”

“Ah, I thought you were a house-breaker in the first place!” said Sir Richard, shaking his head.

“I am not a house-breaker! You know I am not!”

“If the Runners are after you, it is obvious to me that you are a desperate character,” he replied, slipping his snuff-box into his pocket. “Let us go downstairs, and have some breakfast.”

“Please, dear sir, be serious! I am sure that my Aunt must have set the Runner on to me!”

“My dear child, if there is any one thing more certain than another it is that Bow Street has never heard of your existence. Don’t be silly!”

“Oh!” She heaved a sigh of relief. “I do trust you are right, but it is just the sort of thing Aunt Almeria would do!”

“You are the best judge of that, no doubt, but you may take it from me that it is not in the least the sort of thing a Bow Street Runner would do. You will probably find that the man he wants is our friend Mr Yarde.”

“Yes, at first I thought that too, but he says the Runner is welcome to search him if he wants to.”

“Then it is safe to assume that Mr Yarde has disposed of whatever booty it was he ran off with. Breakfast!”

In considerable trepidation, Pen followed him down to the parlour. They found Jimmy Yarde discussing a plate of cold beef. He greeted Sir Richard with a grin and a wink, obviously quite unabashed by his previous encounter with him that morning, to which he referred in the frankest terms. “When I meet up with a leery cove, I don’t bear malice,” he announced, raising a tankard of ale. “So here’s your wery good health, guv’nor, and no hard feelings!”

Sir Richard seemed to be rather bored, and merely nodded. Jimmy Yarde fixed him with a twinkling eye, and said: “And no splitting to any harman about poor old Jimmy boning your lobb, because he never did, and you know well it’s in your pocket at this wery moment. What’s more,” he added handsomely, “I wouldn’t fork you now I has your measure, gov’nor, not for fifty Yellow Boys!”

“I’m glad of that,” said Sir Richard.

“No splitting?” Jimmy said, his head on one side.

“Not if I am allowed to eat my breakfast in peace,” replied Sir Richard wearily.

“All’s bowman then!” said Jimmy, “and not another word will you hear from me, guv’nor, till we gets to Bristol. Damme if I don’t ride outside the rattler, just to oblige you!”

Sir Richard looked meditatively at him, but said nothing. Pen sat down facing the window, and watched the road for signs of a Bow Street Runner.

Contary to the landlady’s expectations, the Runner did not reach the inn until some little time after the breakfast covers had been removed, and Jimmy Yarde had strolled out to lounge at his ease on a bench set against the wall of the hostelry.

The Runner entered the inn by way of the yard at the back of it, and the first person he encountered was Sir Richard, who was engaged in settling his account with the landlord. Miss Creed, at his elbow, drew his attention to the Runner’s arrival by urgently twitching his coat sleeve. He looked up, with raised brows, saw the newcomer, and lifted his quizzing-glass.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” said the Runner, touching his hat. “Me not meaning to intrude, but being wishful to speak with the landlord.”

“Certainly,” said Sir Richard, his brows still expressive of languid surprise.

“At your convenience, sir: no hurry, sir!” said the Runner, retreating to a discreet distance.

The sigh which escaped Miss Creed was one of such profound relief that it was plain her alarms had not until that moment been allayed. Sir Richard finished paying his shot, and with a brief: “Come, Pen!” tossed over his shoulder, left the taproom.

“He didn’t come to find me!” breathed Pen.

“Of course he didn’t.”

“I couldn’t help being a little alarmed. What shall we do now, sir?”

“Shake off your very undesirable travelling-acquaintance,” he replied briefly.

She gave a gurgle. “Yes, but how? I have such a fear that he means to go with us to Bristol.”

“But we are not going to Bristol. While he is being interrogated by that Runner, we, my child, are going to walk quietly out by the back door, and proceed by ways, which I trust will not prove as devious as the tapster’s description of them, to Colerne. There we shall endeavour to hire a vehicle to carry us to Queen Charlton.”

“Oh, famous!” cried Pen. “Let us go at once!”

Five minutes later they left the inn unobtrusively, by way of the yard, found themselves in a hayfield, and skirted it to a gate leading into a ragged spinney.

The village of Colerne was rather less than three miles distant, but long before they had reached it Sir Richard was tired of his portmanteau. “Pen Creed, you are a pestilent child!” he told her.

“Why, what have I done?” she asked, with one of her wide, enquiring looks.

“You have hailed me from my comfortable house—”

“I didn’t! It was you who would come!”

“I was drunk.”

“Well, that was not my fault,” she pointed out.

“Don’t interrupt me! You have made me travel for miles in a conveyance smelling strongly of dirt and onions—”

“That was the fat woman’s husband,” interpolated Pen. “I noticed it myself.”

“No one could have failed to notice it. And I am not partial to onions. You drew a portrait of me which led everyone in the coach to regard me in the light of an oppressor of innocent youth—”

“Not the thin, disagreeable man. He wanted me to be oppressed.”

“He was a person of great discrimination. Not content with that, you pitchforked me into what threatens to be a life-friendship with a pickpocket, to escape from whose advances I am obliged to tramp five miles, carrying a portmanteau which is much heavier than I had supposed possible. It only remains for me to become embroiled in an action for kidnapping, which I feel reasonably assured your aunt will bring against me.”

“Yes, and now I come to think of it, I remember that you said you were going to be married,” said Pen, quite unimpressed by these strictures. “Will she be very angry with you?”

“I hope she will be so very angry that she will wish never to see my face again,” said Sir Richard calmly. “In fact, brat, that reflection so far outweighs all other considerations that I forgive you the rest.”

“I think you are a very odd sort of person,” said Pen. “Why did you ask her to marry you, if you did not wish to?”

“I didn’t. During the past two days that is the only folly I have not committed.”

“Well, why did you mean to ask her, then?”

“You should know.”

“But you are a man! No one could make you do anything you did not choose to do!”

“They came mighty near it. If you had not dropped out of the window into my arms, I have little doubt that I should at this moment be receiving the congratulations of my acquaintance.”