“Many an hour ago; it’s five o clock.”
“Five!”
“And after.”
Tom burst into apologies, in the midst of which the woman put on a shawl and went out. He was still standing irresolute in his socks, dazed by his long sleep, when there came a rattle of wheels outside, and in rushed Jim with his whip and an evening newspaper.
“Glad to find you still here, sir!” cried he. “I want somebody as can read to read me a slice out of this ’ere Globe. It’s awful, sir—awful! The wery gen’leman I drove last night! I’ve come straight from Scotland Yard!”
Tom suddenly remembered when and where he had seen the other before; it was overnight on the box of Blaydes’s hackney-coach.
“Who is the gentleman?”
“Blaydes it seems his name is; or rather was!”
“Was?”
“He’s dead—”
“Dead!”
“Stone dead—murdered—by a man I saw as close as I see you now, but never looked twice at! It’s all in the Globe, they tell me; read it out, sir, read it out.”
