“And then lost?”
“No. I pouched the lot and caught my train. I wasn’t going to spoil the omen.” He was smiling now—very contentedly.
“What was the number?”
“Twenty-one.”
“This is the twenty-first of July,” I observed.
“Gamblers must be guided by something, some fancy, some omen,” he said. “I had just heard that Waldo and Lucinda were to be married on the twenty-first.”
The monkey did peep out for a moment then; but we were already in George Street; the church was in sight, and my attention was diverted. “Better for you if you’d lost,” I murmured carelessly.
“Aye, aye, dull prudence!” he said mockingly. “But—the sensation! I can feel it now!”
We were on the other side of the road from the church, but almost opposite to it, as he spoke, and it was only then that I noticed anything peculiar. The first thing which I marked was an unusual animation in the usual small crowd of the “general public” clustered on either side of the steps: they were talking a lot to one another. Still more peculiar was the fact that all the people in carriages and cars seemed to have made a mistake; they drew up for a moment before the entrance; a beadle, or some official of that semi-ecclesiastical order, said something to them, and they moved on again—nobody got out! To crown it, a royal brougham drove up—every Londoner can tell one yards away, if it were only by the horses—and stopped. My uncle, Sir Paget himself, came down the steps, took off his tall hat, and put his head in at the carriage window for a moment; then he signed, and no doubt spoke, to the footman, who had not even jumped down from the box or taken off his hat. And the royal brougham drove on.