“Tain’t likely he’ll take it away for good and all,” reasoned Thomas; “he’ll drop it when he gets to t’other side of the park and out into the main road. I shall get it back right enough—the name’s on the stock—as right as they’ll get him when we put ’em on his track.”
They crossed the road, and making through the gap, found Mr. Perks exactly as he had been left; at least, the slight change that had taken place in his condition certainly was not to his advantage, the faithful Slot having taken a fancy to rest his heavy fore-paws on the back of Mr. Perks’s head, so that the nose of that unlucky wretch was pressed into the moist earth to an extent that threatened suffocation. He was powerless to cry out; all he could do to signal the extent of his distress was to wave the fingers of his imprisoned hands; this, however, he did with an energy that induced his captors to hasten his deliverance.
“Take his heels, Tom, and I’ll take his shoulders,” remarked Joe. “You carry the lantern, boy, and go first.”
“What are you going to do with me?” gasped Mr. Perks, probably imagining that, after the treatment he had already received, it was not unlikely that they intended to deal with him in a violent and summary manner—to take him, perhaps, bound neck and crop as he was, and pitch him into some handy piece of water.
“We’re going to do nothing with you, my lad,” replied Thomas, “’cept carry you to jail. You’ll find somebody there that will do something with you, I daresay.”
“They can’t hang me, even if they brings it home to me, that’s summat,” said Mr. Perks, philosophically.
“Lucky for you,” remarked Joseph; “you’d have murdered me if you could, you know you would.”
“I’d ha’ murdered somebody if I could, there’s no mistake about that, strike me blind if there is. I’d ha’ clove his—head through if it hadn’t ha’ been for them infernal dawgs as hindered it. That’s the whelp I mean.”
And suddenly raising his head as he spoke, and catching sight of me going first with the light, he drew up his knees and made a lunge at me that would have hurt me, I don’t know how much, had not Joseph perceived his design, and to avert it, let Mr. Perks’s shoulders fall unceremoniously to the ground.
“Don’t repeat that trick, young fellow,” observed Joseph, again catching up his end of Mr. Perks in the coolest manner; “there’s two ways of getting you to the cart, you see—carrying you, and dragging you; you know which is easiest.”
“You might drag me to—, if you liked, if you’d on’y let me get one fair swipe at him,” growled Mr. Perks, savagely. However, he allowed himself to be carried to the cart and shoved in at the tail-board without further attempting to assault me. When he found that the men were making ready to start, and that, beside the dead body in the sack, no one was to share the lower part of the cart with him, he found his tongue again.
“Where’s my mate?” he inquired, in a tone of surprise.
“Where you’d like to be, I’ll warrant,” replied Joe, with pardonable but indiscreet malice; “he’s luckier than you—he’s bolted.”
“Bolted, and took my gun with him,” put in the equally indiscreet Tom.
If, however, they thought to add envy to the tortures Mr. Perks was already enduring, they missed their aim. Ned was a wide-awake villain. It was not the first time he had been “in trouble,” and he was properly alive to the advantage of having a trustworthy “pal” at liberty.
“Got clean off, d’ye mean to say?” asked he, eagerly.
“I didn’t say that,” answered Tom; “he’ll be glad to lay that sore head of his down somewhere before he’s many hours older, and then they’ll nail him, as sure as he’s born. Give the boy a lift up, Joe; let him ride between us.”
“Can’t I run by the side, please, sir?” said I. “I can keep up with you, if you don’t drive very fast.” I was, not unnaturally, a little afraid of trusting myself so close to the ruffian who had expressed himself so unamiably towards me.
“Pish! you’re safe enough,” replied Mr. Joseph, bundling me up on to the cart-seat; “he’s a cleverer fellow than I take him for if he can so much as move a limb to hurt you or anybody else until we lift him out.” And whipping the mare, we started for Ilford, distant about two miles.
We had not gone far, however, when Mr. Joseph was convinced that Ned Perks was cleverer than he took him to be, inasmuch as he found means of hurting me in a mental, if not in a corporeal sense, and that without freeing one of his limbs, or even attempting to do so.
“Jim!” he shouted.
“Don’t answer him,” said gamekeeper Tom.
“Jim, you heerd what they said, didn’t yer? The guv’nor’s gone, and he’s took a gun with him. How far you have chirped, or how far you ain’t chirped, I don’t know. Don’t—you—chirp—any—more.”
The concluding words of Mr. Perks’s sentence were delivered slowly and deliberately, and in a manner calculated to be impressive.
“Save your breath, you silly fellow,” laughed Mr. Tom, turning about in his seat to address the live man lying cheek-and-jowl with the still and peaceful dead man in the cart: “he’ll say what he likes, and he’ll say the truth.”
“Jim!” persisted Mr. Perks.
“Sit down here in front, and hold on to the rail, my boy,” suggested gamekeeper Joseph; “you won’t be able to hear what he says then, perhaps.”
I adopted the suggestion most willingly, as it removed me a little from the man who had expressed his willingness to be dragged to the antipodes of heaven if he were allowed only “one fair swipe” at me, and sat on the butt of the shaft, with my feet on the step, and holding on with both hands to the front rail of the cart.
“Jim!” bawled my persecutor, loudly enough for me to hear had I been on the other side of the road; “you know what the guv’nor told yer; you know what he promised yer if yer ever chirped about his business, or cut up any ways orkard. He’ll do it, mind yer. You dare so much as open your jaws to’rds chirpin’ more’n you have chirped, and he’ll be down on yer—certain. P’r’aps it mightn’t be this week, and p’r’aps it mightn’t be next, and you might think it was all blowed over. You’ll see. When you think you’re rightest you’ll find yourself wrongest, and then he’ll drop on yer. Don’t you think as the law’ll kiver yer; the law can’t be alwis a-lookin’, and it wouldn’t take the guv’nor a minute to do what he said, don’t yer know, and he’ll do it. If you was a-bed a hundred miles off, and the door was double-locked, and there was iron bars acrost and acrost the chimbley, you’d wake up and find him stoopin’ over yer in the dark, ready to do what he said. So take a caution, my kiddy.”