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"Humph," muttered Rofflash, "so much the better. The end on't is I pocket Dorrimore's gold and no sharing out. If Sally likes to be a fool 'tis her affair and not mine. I've only got to keep my eye on her. What a woman like her wants she'll get, even if it costs her her life. Sooner or later, madam, you'll find your way to the fellow's lodgings, and it'll go hard if I'm not on the spot too."
The sticks snapped and in a white heat of passion she broke them again and again and flung the fragments in the discomfited captain's face. Her fury and his smarting nose somewhat sobered Rofflash. He knew well enough that when Sally was in her cups she was capable of any deed of violence.
The wench had a friend in the crowd a man who got her away damn him. I jumped from the coach and we had a set to. See this?" Scowling ferociously Rofflash pointed to a lump beneath his eye which promised to become a beautiful mouse on the morrow. "The jackanapes got me on the hop; my foot slipped and s'life, I was down. But for that I'd ha' spitted him like a partridge.
The more she drank, the more she cursed herself for having allowed Vane to slip through her fingers, and being in a reckless mood, she said as much to Rofflash. Otherwise she would hardly have made a confidant of a fellow who combined swash-buckling with highway robbery. "What!" jeered Captain Jeremy, "Sally Salisbury own herself beaten over a man.
Years after, indeed, her temper led to her undoing when inflamed by drink and jealousy she stabbed the Honourable John Finch at "The Three Tuns" in Chandos Street. Rofflash hastened to mollify the enraged beauty, and did so effectually when he suggested a plan by which she could mortify her rival. Sally heard him almost silently.
One man he had employed three or four years before, when Jacobitism was rampant, in running to earth the writers of seditious pamphlets and broad sheets. The man was Tom Jarvis. Rofflash knew Tom's favourite haunts, and after looking in at various taverns, lighted upon him at the "Angel and Sun." He also lighted upon Vane.
"Half a pint of gin, landlord," said he, in the deep, husky voice of Captain Jeremy Rofflash, and he strode towards the chimney corner of one of the settles, whence he could see the noisy party of drinkers and not be seen himself very well. The landlord brought the gin in a pewter pot and set it down on a ledge fixed to the chimney jamb. "See here, landlord," growled Rofflash, "d'ye know Mr.
As she hurried back to her lodgings in the Borough, Sally was quite unaware that Rofflash, disguised as a beggar with a black patch over his eye and a dirty red handkerchief tied over his head in place of his wig, was stealthily shadowing her. Meanwhile Lavinia was hastening to Grub Street. On her way she bought a pair of shoes which if not quite in the mode were at least fellows.
Without waiting to see what injury he had inflicted Rofflash rushed to a tall cabinet, entered it and closed the doors after him just as a yell of savage joy was raised outside. The iron bar was still across the entrance but there was a jagged aperture above and below. A couple of seconds more and the cabinet was empty. Rofflash had disappeared through a secret door at the back.
His mask, of course, was now removed, and the features were revealed of Captain Jeremy Rofflash. Here he sat drinking until the rumble of the London coach was heard. Then he quitted the bar and went to the stable, where he remained during the stay of the coach which occupied some little time, for the story of the highway robbery had to be told. No one about the inn was in the least surprised.
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