Читать книгу A Poached Peerage - Sir William Magnay - Страница 13

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The man who, avoiding the bar, made his way straight into the coffee-room, entered with an air in which jauntiness and limpness were curiously combined. His get-up showed that curious caricature of the prevailing fashion which dressy young men of depraved, or at least untutored, judgment are prone to affect, and was, from his patent leather boots to his aggressive diamond tie-pin, in singular contrast to his dusty and rather forlorn appearance. His clothes, in spite of their over-smart cut, had the stale, creased look of garments that have been worn for several days continuously. They were, indeed, in keeping with the wearer's hunted look, resembling in character the coat of a fox after a stiff run.

With a half yawn, half sigh of exhaustion, the man dropped into a wooden armchair, and flicked with his partridge cane a bell on the table by him.

"Heigho! My last fling. Now for a good one," he muttered.

Miss Popkiss, more than usually on the alert, and postponing for the moment the respective claims of blue and pink, lost no time in presenting herself.

"Well, my dear, what have you got in the house?" the man inquired, pulling himself together and speaking jauntily, partly from policy, partly from the natural instinct ever roused by the propinquity of a pretty girl.

"Nice cold sirloin, sir," Mercy answered mechanically, regarding the new guest with expectant eyes.

"Beef? Is that the best you can do?" he asked, with a dissatisfied laugh.

"Fowl, sir," Miss Popkiss suggested in a preoccupied tone, trying to adjust the customer's appearance and manner with her preconceived ideas of the peerage.

"Fowl; that's better. No game?"

"Game's not in season, sir."

He gave a loud mirthless laugh to cover his mistake. "No, I suppose not in the country," he retorted with cockney wit. "Now, look here, my dear," he went on, impressively tapping her arm with the crook of his stick; "to cut it short, I want the best dinner you can serve me; regardless of expense, several courses—as many as you like—you understand? Tell cook to do her best, and to hurry up with it."

"Yes, sir," responded Miss Popkiss, having now little doubt as to the guest's identity. "Will you take anything to drink, sir?" she asked, lingeringly, calculating the social advantage to be derived from being the first in the place to see the long-lost and newly-found Lord Quorn.

"Will I take anything to drink?" He whistled scornfully at the suggestion of a doubt in the matter. "Where's your wine-list?"

Miss Popkiss roused herself from her contemplation, and brought it.

The guest ran his fingers quickly down the column devoted not to the brands but to their prices. "Look here. A bottle of number eleven and a bottle of twenty-four pop."

The oldest port-wine and the most expensive champagne. The order settled any lingering doubt in Miss Popkiss' mind. "Anything else, sir?" she asked with an excess of assiduity as she took back the list.

The half-admiring attention with which she was observing him could not fail by this to have its effect upon the visitor. "Well," he answered, with a leer, which was evidently intended to be killing. "I shouldn't mind a sip of something—just to keep me going."

If his words were equivocal, his manner left their meaning unmistakable. Nevertheless Miss Popkiss made a spirited attempt to ignore it. "I suppose you mean a bitters, sir?" she suggested disingenuously.

The guest went through an exaggerated pantomime of scrutinizing the lady's tempting lips. "No; they look anything but bitter," he returned, waggishly amorous.

"A glass of dry sherry, sir? What number would you like?" Miss Popkiss hastily ran to where she had replaced the wine-list, and with the same movement took the opportunity of looking out of the window. Mr. Thomas Sparrow was not in evidence: in fact, the yard seemed empty. Satisfied of this she took the list demurely to the still leering guest.

"Number four," he said, with a world of cheap blandishment in his winking eyes.

"Number four?" Miss Popkiss nearly succeeded in a look of mystification. "Number four is a claret, sir."

"That's more like the colour," he replied significantly. "Here!" He took a step to her, disregarding her feeble attempt to hold the wine-list as a barrier between them. "Don't you know what make four?"

"What, sir?" she asked with a giggle now; preferring his working out of the arithmetical problem as likely to be more racy than her own.

"Why"—taking the obnoxious wine-list with one hand, and slipping the other round her waist—"four is two and two together, like this." And he followed up the proposition by oscular demonstration.

"Oh, my lord! Don't do so, my lord!" Miss Popkiss affected to protest, without, however, raising her voice to a pitch that would reach the bar, or making more than the most perfunctory efforts to release herself from the encircling arm.

"That's a good sample," he grinned amorously. "I should like a dozen."

There was no doubt about him, Miss Popkiss concluded, the episode entirely falling in with her preconception of aristocratic ways. "Oh," she giggled, "you are a naughty nobleman." Then, releasing herself, this time by a business-like effort, she ran off, doubtless with the idea, after the manner of her kind, of doling out her favours and spreading the lordly caresses over as long a period as circumstances permitted.

Perhaps it was as well; for, scarcely had she turned her back on the dusty Philander when the lips which had just been pressed to hers opened wide in a very unromantic yawn. Then their owner threw himself wearily back into the chair and laughed languidly. "Nobleman!" he murmured, with a puff of amused scorn at the provincial greenness. "And she called me my lord when I kissed her." The idea seemed to tickle him in spite of his weariness. "She knows their ways," he commented languidly as he took out a silver cigarette-case, flashily enamelled with a spirited representation of men's three popular vices in combination, and lighted up. "Is it my appearance, or the swagger dinner I have ordered, or both?" he murmured, dropping now to a rueful tone. Opposite to him, filling up the space between the windows, was a long mirror. With what was evidently characteristic conceit, the young man put himself into a photographic attitude, with the cigarette held effectively after the fashion he had noted in certain royal and theatrical portraits, and regarded himself with rueful complacency. "Percy Peckover, my boy," he murmured, "you are going to deprive the world of an ornament. There is plenty of fun in the world, but not for you; so the sooner you are out of it the better. Ah!" he continued with a shudder, "that young woman little thinks that the warm lips just pressed to hers will soon be cold." With a quick, almost despairing action, he put the cigarette in his mouth and then drew a small phial from his pocket. "Yes," he said under his breath; "this will do the business in a jiffy." He shivered, and, as though to pull himself together, puffed vigorously at the cigarette. "By George, I should hope so," he muttered grimly. "Ekin would not play me a trick. Yes," he rambled on reminiscently, "I said—didn't I?—now, mind, no pain, Ekin, old man. None of your strychnines or antimonies. You've got the whole shop to choose from; let me just go off to sleep and wake no more. Yes, there were tears in poor old Tom's eyes; he was so upset he could hardly give me the bottle, telling me to rely on his professional skill. Let's see; he said, 'mix it in a glass of anything you like, and you'll drop off as comfortable as an Archbishop.'" He took out the stopper and sniffed at the phial. "It smells like Westminster Abbey," he said with the irrepressible jocularity of his type. "Well, it's better than——" he shuddered at the unspoken alternative. "It only wants a little courage; just five seconds' pluck," he told himself, as he slipped the phial back into his waistcoat pocket. "The champagne will give me that. 'Ang the future, let me fair enjoy myself for the few moments that are left me."

He lighted a fresh cigarette, got up and stood admiringly before the mirror, pulled down his soiled cuffs, settled his necktie, setting the diamond pin straight, smoothed his hair with a hand that seemed to tremble, then turned away with an exclamation of impatience, and stood looking vacantly out of the window. The feeble humours of the inn-yard seemed to amuse him: anyhow, he did not notice Mr. and Miss Popkiss who had come to the door and stayed there regarding him with intense curiosity and satisfaction.