Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/200

190 a public-house door; he hurried nearer, and found that the object of interest was a man in the clutch of two others. The latter, he perceived at a glance, were police-officers in plain clothes; the man arrested was—Jack Bartley himself.

Jack was beside himself with terror; he had only that moment been brought out of the bar, and was pleading shrilly in an agony of cowardice.

“It ain’t me as made ’em! I never made one in my life! I’ll tell you who it is—I’ll tell you where to find him—it’s Bob Hewlett as lives in Merlin Place! You’ve took the wrong man. It ain’t me as made ’em! I’ll tell you the whole truth, or may I never speak another word! It’s Bob Hewett made ’em all—he lives in Merlin Place, Clerkenwell. I’ll tell you”

Thus far had Bob heard before he recovered sufficiently from the shock to move a limb. The officers were urging their prisoner forward, grinning and nodding to each other, whilst several voices from the crowd shouted abusively at the poltroon whose first instinct was to betray his associate. Bob turned his face