The doom trail

I THE FRAY IN MINCING LANE

I

THE FRAY IN MINCING LANE"Watch! Ho, watch!"

The words rang through the misty darkness of the narrow street. I gathered my cloak around me and skulked closer to the nearest house-wall. Could it be possible the Bow Street runners had picked up my trail again?

And a new worry assailed me. Did the cry come from in front or behind! The fog that mantled London, and which so far had stood my friend, now served to muffle the source of this sudden alarm. Which way should I turn?

"Watch! Curse the sleepy varlets!"

The houses past which I had been feeling my way came to an end. An alley branched off to the right and from its entrance echoed the click of steel—music after my own heart. The blood coursed faster in my veins. No, this could be no trap such as had awaited me ever since I had stepped from the smuggler's small boat. Here was sword-play, a welcome change from the plotting and intrigue which had sickened me.

I cast my cloak back over my shoulder and drew my sword from its sheath, as I ran over the uneven cobbles which paved the alley. Dimly I saw before me a confused huddle of figures that tussled and stamped about in the ghostly mirk of the fog.

"Hold, friend," I shouted.

"Make haste," panted a voice from the middle of the group. "Ha, you scoundrel! You pinked me then."

One man against a gang of assassins! So that was the story. It savored more of Paris than of the staid London of merchants and shop-keepers over which the Hanoverian exercised his stolid sway.

But I had scant time for philosophy. A figure detached itself from the central swarm and came lunging at me with cutlass aswing. I parried his blade and touched him in the shoulder. He bellowed for aid.

"This is no fat alderman, bullies. He wields a swift point. To me, a brace of ye."

They were on me in an instant, my first assailant in front, an assassin on either hand, slashing with hangers and cutlasses that knew no tricks of fence, but only downright force. Their former prey was left with one to handle.

"Get to his rear, one of you, fools," snarled the ruffian in command whilst he pounded at my guard.

But I backed into a handy doorway and barely managed to fend them off. And all the while the real object of their attack continued his appeals for the watch.

'Twas this which spoiled the fray for me. I could not but wonder, as I dodged and parried and thrust, what would happen if his cries should be heard and the watch appear. Would they know me? Or perchance should I have the opportunity to slip quietly away?

I stole a glance about me. Several windows had gone up along the street, and nightcapped heads protruded to add their clamor to that of my friend.

Surely— Aye, they had done it. The ruffian on my left leaped back with ear aslant toward the alley entrance.

"Quick, bullies," he yelled. "'Tis the watch!"

With a celerity that was almost uncanny they disengaged their blades and melted into the fog. Their footfalls dwindled around the corner as I detected the clumping footfalls of the approaching guardians of London's peace.

This brought me to my senses. I sheathed my sword and ran across the roadway, glancing to right and left for the best route of escape. But I reckoned without the other participant in our brawl.

"Be at ease, my master," he said in a voice which had a good thick Dorset burr in it—I liked him from that moment. It sounded so homelike; I could fairly see the rolling fields, the water meadows, the copses, all the scenes that had meant so much to me in boyhood, even the sprawling roofs and chimney stacks of Foxcroft House itself.

"I have reasons not to be at ease," I answered dryly, and would have passed him, but he clutched my arm.

"We have seen an end to the rascals," he strove to reassure me. "'Tis only the watch you hear. Hark to the jingling of their staves."

"I know that full well, my friend," I answered him, goose-flesh rising on my neck as the jingling staves and clumping feet drew nearer; and my thoughts fastened upon the dungeons of the Tower about which we had heard frequent tales at St. Germain. "But I happen to have pressing reasons for avoiding the watch."

My friend pursed his lips in a low whistle.

"So sets the wind in that quarter! Yet you came fast to my help against those cut-purses a moment back."

I laughed. The watch were all but in the alley's mouth. 'Twas idle to think of running now. Indeed, to have done so would have been to banish whatever slight chance I might have had.

"Oh, I am no highwayman," I said.

"Well, whatever you may be, you aided Robert Juggins in his peril, and 'twill be a sore pity if a Worshipful Alderman of the City may not see you through the scrutiny of a band of lazy bench-loafers."

"That is good hearing," I answered.

"Will they have your description?"

"I think not, but if they ask me to account for myself I shall be at fault. I am but lately landed from France, and I have no passport."

He pursed his lips once more in the quaint form of a low whistle.

"I begin to see. Well, my master, we will talk of your plight anon. For the present I have somewhat to say to our gallant rescuers which will put their thoughts upon other matters than young men fresh landed from France without passports to identify themselves by."

He swept a shrewd glance over me from my hat to my heels.

"There is a foreign cut to your wig that I do not like," he commented. "However, we will brazen it out. Here they come."

The watchmen rounded the corner into the alley, lanterns swinging high, staves poised.

"Ho, knaves," proclaimed a pompous voice, "stand and deliver yourselves to us."

"And who may you be?" demanded my friend.

"No friends to brawlers and disturbers of the peace, sirrah," replied the stoutest of the watchmen, stepping to the front of his fellows. "We are the duly constituted and appointed constables and watchmen of his Honor the Worshipful Lord Mayor."

"It would be nearer truth to say that you are the properly constituted and habituated sleepers and time-servers of the city," snapped my companion. "Draw nearer, and examine me."

"Be not rash, captain," quavered one of the watchmen. "He hath the appearance of a most desperate Mohock."

"Nay, sir," adjured the captain of the watch portentously, "do you approach and render yourselves to us. 'Tis not for law-breakers to order the city's watchmen how they shall be apprehended."

"You fool," said my friend very pleasantly, "if you would only trust your eyes you would see a face you have many times seen before this—aye, and shall see again in the morning before the bench of sheriffs when you plead forgiveness for your dilatory performance of the duties entrusted to you."

The watchmen were confused.

"Be cautious, my masters," pleaded the one with the quavering voice. "'Tis like enough a desperate rogue and a strong."

My friend left my side and strode forward toward the captain of the watch, who gave back a pace or two until he felt the stomachs of his followers at his back.

"How now," said he who had called himself Robert Juggins, "hold up that lantern, you, sirrah, with the shaking arm. Look into my face, lazy dogs that you are. Dost know me?"

"'Tis Master Juggins," quoth the quavering voice. "Praise be for that."

"You know me, now!" pressed Master Juggins, poking his finger into the fat figure of the captain.

"Sure, you are Master Juggins," assented that official with sullen reluctance.

"And is an alderman of the city and a cupmate of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs and the Warden of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Traders to the Western Plantations, on his way home from a meeting of his gild, within the city precincts—aye, in Mincing Lane, under the shadow of Paul's—I say am I to be held up by cut-purses, stabbed in the arm, forced to defend my very life—and then denounced and threatened with arrest by the watchmen paid by the city to protect its citizens?"

Master Juggins stopped perforce for breath.

"How say you, knaves!" he resumed. "Of what use have you been! Did you come at my call! Aye, like the sluggards you are. Have you done aught to run down the thieves and assassins who work under your noses!

"You stand here trying to prove that 'tis I, and not they, who have sought to rob myself. Go to! Ye are worthless, and I shall see that the Sheriffs and the Magistrates at Bow Street know of it."

"But, good Master Juggins," begged the captain, now thoroughly aroused to his plight, "sure you——"

"Sure I will," retorted Master Juggins, who had caught another lungful of breath. "Had it not been for this good citizen here—" he swept an arm in my direction—"it had been a corpse you would have found. So much for your diligence and courage!"

"But we will be after the scoundrels, worshipful Master Alderman," pleaded the captain.

"Aye, we shall be hard on their heels, Master Juggins," assured he of the quavery voice.

"Doubt not our diligence, worthy sir!" appealed a third.

"Can you but give us a description of the knaves!" suggested a fourth.

"Shall I do your work for you!" replied Master Juggins in his delightful Dorset burr. Zounds! How I liked the man with his broad humor, his ready courage and prompt good sense!

"Nay, but——"

"But me no buts. Be about your rounds. And if you see any hang-dog-looking rogues or homeless knaves or masterless men, do you apprehend them for the night and lodge them in the Fleet. In the morning you may let me know what you have done. I will then consider whether your belated efforts may overset your cowardice and laziness in the beginning."

"It shall be as you say, good Master Juggins," assented the captain meekly. "Which way went your assailants?"

"What! More questions?" exploded Master Juggins. "Nay, this is too much."

The watchmen turned in their tracks and herded out of the alley like bewildered cattle, all clumping boots, jingling staffs, waving lanterns and jumbled wits. My savior removed his hat and mopped his brow with a white kerchief.

"So much for that," he remarked cheerfully. "Now——"

But he was interrupted from an unexpected quarter. The captain of the watch returned alone.

"I crave your pardon, Master Juggins," he began.

"You well may," agreed Master Juggins.

"Aye; but, good sir, if you will be so kind——"

"Kind I will not be. What, sirrah, after all the insults I have listened to and being nearly murdered into the bargain?"

"No, but worshipful Master Alderman, do you but bear with me an instant. I have a thought——"

"'Tis impossible," pronounced Master Juggins solemnly.

I felt my heart warm to the man. If he was typical of the London citizens then was I glad to be quit of St. Germain and all its atmosphere of petty intrigues and Jesuitical sophistries.

"Aye, but I have," insisted the captain. "We have been warned to keep a watch for a dangerous malefactor, an enemy of the State, one Ormerod, an emissary of the Pretender who is here on an errand against the Crown."

Juggins favored me with a cursory glance of a somewhat peculiar nature. It was not exactly hostile, and yet much of the friendliness which had characterized his manner was gone.

I felt cold chills running down my back. Would he give me up? What right after all had I to expect better treatment from a total stranger, a man who had nothing to gain from shielding me? My knowledge of the world had been acquired mainly from the life of the French Court, and I may be entitled to forgiveness if I was skeptical of any man's disinterestedness of purpose. 'Twas not the way with those with whom I had been familiar.

"Go on," said Juggins coldly to the watchman, withdrawing his attention from me.

"Why, worshipful sir, there is no more to say. It is just that I thought, the attack being made upon you, a well-known citizen, it might have been——"

"And how should I know this person of whom you speak!"

"Why, sir, that I can not——"

"Be about your duties, sirrah," interrupted Master Juggins, "and pester me no longer."

The captain stumped off to where his faithful band awaited him, the several curious-minded citizens who had listened to the altercation from the vantage-point of their bedroom windows retired to resume their slumbers, and Master Juggins strode back to my side.

"Is your name Ormerod!" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I am Harry Ormerod, once a captain of foot under the Duke of Berwick; and I formerly had the honor to be chamberlain to the man whom some people call King James the Third."

"You are a Papist?"

"No, sir."

"But you are a rebel, a conspirator against the Crown?"

"I do not expect you to believe me, of course," I answered as lightly as I could, "but I am not a rebel—in spirit or intent, at any rate—and I am not conspiring against the Crown at this moment—although I have done so in the past—and I am at this moment a fugitive from justice."

"Humph," said Master Juggins thoughtfully.

He stood there in the middle of the alley, caressing his shaven chin, heedless of the thin trickle of blood that flowed from the wound in the flesh of his left arm.

"Ormerod," he murmured. "Harry Ormerod. But surely—of course—why, you are Ormerod of Foxcroft in Dorset."

I shook my head sadly.

"No, my friend; if you know that story you must know that I was Ormerod of Foxcroft House."

Master Juggins was suddenly all animation.

"I know it well," he returned. "You and Charles, your elder brother, were both out in the '19. Charles died in Scotland, and you escaped with the remnants of the expedition to France."

"And Foxcroft House was sequestrated to the Crown," I amended bitterly.

"The Hampshire branch have it now," went on Master Juggins. "They toadied it through the Pelhams."

"Yes, —— them!"

I had forgotten my surroundings, forgotten the dingy cobbles of Mincing Lane, forgotten the strange circumstances under which I had met this strange person who seemed so intimately versed in my family history. My thoughts were back for the moment in the soft green Dorset countryside of my boyhood. I lived over again the brave days at Foxcroft when Charles had been master and I his lieutenant. But the moment passed, the memories faded, and my eyes saw again the drab buildings of the alley and the odd figure of my deliverer—whom I had first delivered.

"And you, sir," I said. "May I ask how it happens you know so much concerning the fortunes of a plain Dorset family?"

He seemed not to hear me, standing there in a brown study, and I spoke to him again sharply.

"Yes, yes; I heard," he answered, almost impatiently. "I was—But this is no place for discussion. Come with me to my house. I live in Holborn, not many minutes' walk from here."

Some trace of my feelings must have been revealed in my attitude—my face he could not have seen in the darkness—for he continued:

"You need not fear me, Master Ormerod. I mean you no harm. I could not do harm to your father's son."

"But you?" I asked. "Who are you, sir?"

He chuckled dryly.

"You know my name," he answered, "and you heard the watch acknowledge my civic dignity. For the rest—if you have spent much time in Dorset you should know a Dorset voice."

"I do that," I assented heartily, "and 'tis grateful to my ears."

"Then be content with that, sir, for a few minutes. Come, let us be on our way. I have reasons for not wishing to invite a second attack upon us."

He set off at a great pace, his head buried in his cloak collar, and I walked beside him, puzzled exceedingly.