The Works of George W. M. Reynolds — page 107: what you’re looking at

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

90 THE COURT OF LONDON anybody, say you have come to see Lord Sackville, or your old butler, Plumpstead, or anybody else, so long as you invent some excuse.”’ Then having delivered these instructions with nervous haste, Jessica tripped away, hurrying along the passage to Venetia’s boudoir, which she immediately entered. But scarcely had the door of that sanctuary closed behind the lady’s-maid, when the colonel, who was standing irreso- lute and bewildered where she had left him, was suddenly seized upon by two powerful arms, and the ejaculation of alarm which rose to his lips was stifled by a hand being placed on his mouth. Glancing around at the individual who had thus surreptitiously assailed and mastered him, he recognized the moustached and whiskered countenance of the formidable Captain Tash. For a moment the colonel struggled desperately to ex- tricate himself, but the captain hitting him in his arms, and still maintaining one hand forcibly held over his mouth, carried him into the room whence he had thus so suddenly emerged. There, as the captain immediatelv closed the door behind him, they were enveloped in utter darkness, but as the colonel felt himself released from the powertul gripe of his assailant, he heard that formidable individual’s voice breathe a terrible threat in his ears. “Tf you dare cry out, or move without my leave,’ the captain, “‘ J will eut you into mince-meat.”’ Malpas was overwhelmed with terror. What could all this mean? Had he been inveigled into a trap to be ul- treated, perhaps murdered? Every circumstance seemed to confirm his belief that treachery was intended him. That seeming inability of the lady’s-maid to find the key oi the room opposite, the announcement from within that room, and which he of course believed to have been made by Venetia, the abrupt manner in which Jessica had left him, the sudden assault made on him by Tash, and now this forcible carrying him off into a place where a pitchy darkness prevailed, together with a knowledge of the desperate character of the man himself and the conviction that there was a deep personal animosity existing on that individual’s part against him, all these circumstances were but too well calculated to fill even a braver man than Malpas with sus- picions of treachery. ) sald ECORMIELIOO KS nm