The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 44: what you’re looking at

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

THE RESULTS OF THE PLOT 27 are Mr. Coffin, if I mistake not?’ ‘ Well, ma’am,’ says I, ‘ Dan’el Coffin is my name, for want of a better. But it’s very provoking that Mr. Sampson is out, for I want to speak to him very particular.’ ‘ I think he said he was going down to Jacob’s Island,’ observes the old housekeeper; and you may be assured that I was deuced glad to hear this, because, of course, I felt certain that he had fallen into the trap. ‘Do you think he will be long, ma’am?’ says I. ‘I dare say a couple of hours,’ she answered, ‘ but can’t you call back again? or else perhaps you will walk in and wait till he comes home?’ ‘ Well, ma’am,’ says I, not appearing to catch too greedily at the offer, although it was just what I wanted, ‘ perhaps that’s the best thing I can do.’ ‘ Walk in, then, sir,’ says Dame Margery, so polite and civil and simpering I never saw anything like it; and so she showed me into the breakfast-parlour and there left me. I let about ten minutes elapse, and then thinking that the coast must be clear, I took a candle, stole out of the parlour, crept up the stairs, and was within half a dozen steps of the landing, when lo and behold! the light of the candle suddenly showed me three Bow Street runners sitting on the top step, each with a brace of pistols in his hands. You may easily suppose that I was taken so aback I didn’t know what the deuce to do; while a voice seemed to whisper in my ears, ‘You are betrayed! you are betrayed!’ The three runners burst out laughing, and one of them cried, ‘ Holloa, Dan’el! what are you doing here?’ ‘ Why, I only walked up in a fit of absence of mind,’ says I, no better excuse coming into my head at the instant, ‘ but what are you doing here?’ ‘Oh, only mounting guard over the police book, which somebody or another has vowed to possess himself of to- night. But of course such a respectable gentleman as you, Mr. Coffin, can’t have come here for any such purpose,’ and then the three scoundrels burst out into such another horse- laugh that I could have killed them on the spot. In fact, I was more than half a mind to fall foul on them; but seeing that the game was all up with regard to Larry, and that whatever I might do would only put me deeper into his power, I pretended to put a good face on the matter and tried to laugh away my confusion. They didn’t make any attempt to detain me, and so I wished them good night and got out of the house a precious deal quicker than I entered it. CoOnnicloooks (C(O)