"Take me somewhere where we can have a quiet talk," Mostyn said huskily. "There has been trouble, Pierce, and I want to tell you all about it."
Pierce glanced quickly into his friend's face and realised that there must indeed have been trouble. "Poor old chap!" he exclaimed. "I was blind not to see that there was something wrong. Come along up to the smoking-room; we can find a corner, and you shall tell me all about it."
As they were about to set their feet on the broad staircase they were buttonholed by Captain Armitage, who was coming downstairs to the hall. He laid a hand upon an arm of each of the young men—almost as if to support himself—and began to talk hoarsely of the day's racing.
"I dropped a pot," he muttered. "Infernal bad luck! Didn't even back Hipponous. Lost my money in backing old Rory's horses so often that I couldn't think his luck was going to turn. Damnable—what?"
It was some moments before Pierce could shake him off; then, as the two young men continued their way up the stairs, Pierce commented in no unmeasured terms upon Captain Armitage as a member of the club.
"The fellow makes himself a general nuisance," he grumbled. "He's always hanging over the tape, and forces his conversation upon everyone who happens to come near him. He belongs to the genus 'club bore.' The waiters hate him, too, for he gives endless trouble and never subscribes a cent to any of the servants' funds. Then he is always half-screwed; it's lucky that he doesn't live in town, for if he did he would spend the whole of his time at the club."
"How did he get in?" asked Mostyn, for the sake of saying something.
"Oh, he was quite a decent sort in his younger days," returned Pierce, "and it's for the sake of old times that my uncle and other good-natured people put up with him. Then they are sorry for his daughter, Rada—she has quaint ways—but they suit her somehow."
"Do they?" Mostyn spoke the words viciously, upon a tone of doubt: from his experience of that afternoon he was not at all inclined to attribute virtues to Rada. He felt, indeed, that he disliked her intensely.
They installed themselves in a recess of the smoking-room, and Pierce, summoning the waiter, ordered a couple of brandy-and-sodas, though it was only after considerable persuasion that Mostyn could be induced to touch spirits. He was not a teetotaler, as his brothers professed to be, but the habits of his home-life dominated him. It was necessary for Pierce to point out that a stimulant was palpably required, and that Mostyn must look upon it as a medicine.