Could a cab be got? Of course a
cab could be got. A cab was got, and within a quarter of an hour of
the making of the attack, the two members of Parliament were on their
way to Grosvenor Place.
There was hardly a word spoken in the cab, for Mr. Kennedy was in
pain. When, however, they reached the door in Grosvenor Place,
Phineas wanted to go, and leave his friend with the servants, but
this the Cabinet Minister would not allow. "Of course you must see
my wife," he said. So they went up-stairs into the drawing-room,
and then upon the stairs, by the lights of the house, Phineas could
perceive that his companion's face was bruised and black with dirt,
and that his cravat was gone.
"I have been garrotted," said the Cabinet Minister to his wife.
"What?"
"Simply that;--or should have been, if he had not been there. How he
came there, God only knows."
The wife's anxiety, and then her gratitude, need hardly be
described,--nor the astonishment of the husband, which by no means
decreased on reflection, at the opportune re-appearance in the nick
of time of the man whom three minutes before the attack he had left
in the act of going in the opposite direction.
"I had seen the men, and thought it best to run round by the corner
of Grosvenor Square," said Phineas.
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