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Rh be back till to-morrow night. Suppose," he added, musing, "we were to telegraph to him at Slopperton instanter? I know where he hangs out there. If anybody could find a cab and take the message it would be doing Marwood an inestimable service," added Mr. Cordonner, passing through the bar, and lazily seating himself on a green-and-gold Cream of the Valley cask, with his hat very much on the back of his head, and his hands in his pockets. "I'll write the message."

He scribbled upon a card—"Go across to Liverpool. He's given us the slip, and is there;" and handed it politely towards the three Cheerfuls who were leaning over the pewter counter.

Splitters, the dramatic author, clutched the document eagerly; to his poetic mind it suggested that best gift of inspiration, "a situation."

"I'll take it," he said; "what a fine line it would make in a bill! 'The intercepted telegram,' with a comic railway clerk, and the villain of the piece cutting the wires!"

"Away with you, Splitters," said Percy Cordonner. "Don't let the Strand become verdant beneath your airy tread. Don't stop to compose a five-act drama as you go, that's a good fellow. 'Liza, my dear girl, a pint of your creamiest Edinburgh, and let it be as mild as the disposition of your humble servant."

Three days after the above conversation, three gentlemen were assembled at breakfast in a small room in a tavern overlooking the quay at Liverpool. This triangular party consisted of the Smasher, in an elegant and simple morning costume, consisting of tight trousers of Stuart plaid, an orange-coloured necktie, a blue checked waistcoat, and shirt-sleeves. The Smasher looked upon a coat as an essentially outdoor garment, and would no more have invested himself in it to eat his breakfast than he would have partaken of that refreshment with his hat on, or an umbrella up. The two other gentlemen were Mr. Darley, and his chief, Mr. Peters, who had a little document in his pocket signed by a Lancashire magistrate, on which he set considerable value. They had come across to Liverpool as directed by the telegraph, and had there met with the Smasher, who had received letters for them from London with the details of the escape, and orders to be on the look-out for Peters and Gus. Since the arrival of these two, the trio had led a sufficiently idle and apparently purposeless life. They had engaged an apartment overlooking the quay, in the window of which they were seated for the best part of the day, playing the intellectual and exciting game of all-fours. There did not seem much in this to forward the cause of Richard Marwood. It is true that Mr. Peters was wont to vanish from the room every now and then, in order to speak to mysterious and grave-looking gentlemen, who commanded respect wherever they went, and before whom