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Besides, if I blow on him he'll be put in chokey and I shan't be able to get anything out of him, and when he comes out he'll do for me." And then, losing her temper, she shook her fist in the air and broke out into a flood of language such as would neither be pretty to hear nor good to repeat. Mr. Quest was a man of judgment.
I sat up all night with paper and ink, and by the morning I had the two charts all ready, signed with the sign of four, that is, of Abdullah, Akbar, Mahomet, and myself. "Well, gentlemen, I weary you with my long story, and I know that my friend Mr. Jones is impatient to get me safely stowed in chokey. I'll make it as short as I can.
He met some friends, too, one was a person rather like himself, with the same swaggering high-handed air, who accosted him as we were passing the corner of the square just by the Hôtel d'Aix. "What ho! Basil my boy!" cried the stranger. "In chokey? Took up by the police? What've you done? Robbed a church?" "Come on with us and you'll soon know. No, really, come along, I may want you.
"So he must have been kidnapped or something after all, sir, or he would be in chokey now." It was true, after all. Romance reserved me for another fate, for another sort of captivity, for more than one sort. And my imagination had been captured, enslaved already by the image of that young girl who had called me her English cousin, the girl with the lizard, the girl with the dagger!
'S'pose you'll have to go, says the missus for the bosses was both away at another place they got. 'S'pose so, says I. 'Better take my swag with me anyhow. Course, by the time my three months was up, things was at the slackest; an' I could n't go straight back to a decent place, an' me fresh out o' chokey. Fact, I can't go back to that district no more.
Another prisoner I knew had been about thirty-two years in prison he was paralyzed, and if he had been allowed a little tobacco daily, would have been as happy as a king, and never sought to leave the prison. He generally sold most of his food to other prisoners for tobacco; occasionally he was detected and punished, and I always observed that he came out of 'Chokey' fatter than when he went in.
And Holmes scowled at the fat footman before him, who fidgeted uneasily as he replied: "Well, er, ah, yes; Hi was put in chokey once about ten years ago for lifting a diamond stick-pin belonging to a fellow-servant when Hi was working for the Duke of Bridgerswold; but Hi gave it back to him, Hi hassure you Hi did, Mr. 'Olmes."
Instead of replying to my question, he eyed me for some time in silence with sullen, yellow-shot eyes, and then closed his knife with a loud snick. "You're not a beak," he said, "too young for that, I guess. They had me in chokey at Paisley and they had me in chokey at Wigtown, but by the living thunder if another of them lays a hand on me I'll make him remember Corporal Rufus Smith!
What exactly was the trouble I didn't understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It explains everything. It's like the Unwritten Law, don't you know, which you plead in America if you've done anything they want to send you to chokey for and you don't want to go.
Saying this, the commander turned to the last man the morose one, questioning him in like fashion. "And what have you been?" "I'm a `downright, sir," said he, as grave as a judge. "Wot they calls a `downright, sir." "Now, don't you try on any of your jokes with me, my man, or you'll find yourself in the wrong box, which is the strong box on board ship, and vulgarly called chokey!"
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