"A good deal, as you'll see," I returned pulling out a notebook, and feigning to write therein. "Your number, I see, is 2071. I shall want you at Bow Street, to-morrow. Perhaps you are not aware that I am a detective, and that the lady you have aided to escape was to have been arrested this morning?" The man assumed a more respectful demeanour. "Axes your pardon, governor, but how was I to know that the lady was 'wanted,' and that a 'tec was arter her? The lady she says to me, she says——" "What?" I interrupted. "She spoke to you, then? She wasn't dumb?" "Dumb? No more than you are, governor. She says to me: 'Coachman, there's a gentleman a-follerin' o' me——'" "That's not a verbatim report, I suppose?" I said with a smile. "Wot's that?" "Those were not her exact words, I mean?" "They wos her exact words, governor," replied the cabman, with a solemnity befitting the witness-box, "so help me! 'There's a gentleman a-follerin' o' me,' she says, 'an admirer of mine pestering me with his attentions, and I want to get rid of him. Will you help me?' 'If I can, miss,' I says. 'Well, then,' she says, 'drive fast, and the moment you have turned the corner of Long Acre, draw up sharp. I shall get out there and then you drive on at once to Euston. He'll follow you, thinking I am still in the cab. Will[Pg 30] you do this, and I'll give you a sovereign?' Of course I says, 'Yes.' She give me the quid, and directly I turned the corner at Long Acre she was out like a shot, almost afore I'd time to draw up. She darted down a side-street like winking, and I drove on according to orders." [Pg 30] I could not refrain from smiling at my own discomfiture. She had guessed that I would follow her, and in the long interval occupied by our railway journey she had marked out her plan of action, and had devised a pretty little stratagem into which I had readily fallen. Why should she act thus? Could this lady really be George in disguise? This idea was inspired by the belief that she had come from the same house in which he had taken refuge.
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