The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 388: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

366 THE COURT OF LONDON ruffians were not already standing behind him or creeping - gtealthily toward him. No, they were still seated at the table, drinking and talking. The man Bencull had thrown off his coat and appeared in his shirt-sleeves. This in reality was because the night was close, the room was hot, and much liquor had made him feverish; but to the excited imagination of Sir Douglas Huntingdon it appeared as if the fellow were preparing himself to do the work of murder, as a butcher prepares for the slaughter of an ox; and now, wrought up to a pitch of desperation, the baronet snatched up the knife, made but one bound from his seat to the door, lifted the latch, and darted forth into the pitchy blackness of the night. With ejaculations of amazement and fury, Bencull, the Durrynacker, and the Mushroom Faker rushed after the fugitive; and those cries of rage, reaching the chamber above, told Nell Gibson that the baronet had escaped, and startled the Buttoner with the conviction that something was wrong. Rushing down the stairs, he found the lower room empty and the door wide open; and he was about to dart forth and join in the pursuit when an idea that flashed to his brain struck him, as it were, with the sudden blow of a hammer, and made him stop short in the midst of his furious excitement, as a drunken man is sobered all in a moment by some fearful announcement. ECORMIECLIOO KS, (EO)