“Will you?” he yelped. “You couldn’t do it—no, nor three of you.”
“Not, eh?” said the stranger; and then Bob Calmour hardly knew what had happened, except that some irresistible force had got him by the scruff of the neck and was propelling him rapidly towards the swing doors. The latter swung, and Bob shot down the steps outside, and would have fallen bang on his nose but that he cannoned into a passing stranger just in time.
“Here! Hi! Hold up! Why the devil don’t you look where you’re going, you silly young ass!” cried the latter angrily as he collared him. All the swagger and bounce had evaporated from the luckless Bob. The whimpered apology died away into a sort of yelp of terror, and his pasty face went ashy white as he realised that he had run bang into no less formidable a person than Haldane. And in the hand of the latter was a riding-crop. Visions of the ghastly thrashing he had deserved at that individual’s hands, and would certainly receive, finished him off, and he dropped limply on to the pavement in a sitting posture, half fainting.
“Awfully sorry, sir,” he was just able to whine; “but I’ve been violently assaulted by a ruffian in there, and—er—couldn’t see where I—I—was going.”
Haldane looked at him with a sort of good-natured contempt, seeing before him just an ordinary raffish young pup who had probably got quarrelsome in his cups and come off worst.
“Well, you’d better go away home,” he said shortly, and passed on, leaving the unspeakable Bob to pick himself up with feelings akin to those of a criminal reprieved on the very drop itself, then as one condemned afresh as he saw Wagram cross the road and join Haldane. The two stood talking together, then, turning, they looked at him. Of course, Wagram was giving him away, decided the terror-stricken Bob, whose every instinct now was flight—headlong flight; wherefore, having shuffled rapidly round a friendly corner, he sprinted for cover all he knew, nor stopped till he found himself, panting, within the—for once welcome because protective—offices of Pownall and Skreet. Nor did he more than half hear the acrid jobation to which Pownall, who had seen him arrive, treated him by reason of having taken so long about the business upon which he had been sent out.
Here again came in the strange, mysterious workings of Fate—or Providence. Had the African adventurer been a little more roused to ire it is conceivable that, not content with throwing the offensive Bob into the street, he might even have kicked him along a section of the same, which, of course, would have befallen exactly what time Haldane was passing. In which event the whole course of this history might have been changed; in fact, we will go as far as to say that it certainly would have been. And it has been recorded that Haldane seldom came to Bassingham.
“Hope I haven’t been the means of spoiling custom,” said Develin Hunt pleasantly as he returned to where he had been standing, “because, if so, I hope that all here will put a name to theirs and join me by doing something to make up for it.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Mr Hunt,” said the landlord, who, attracted by the scuffle, short as it was, had come in. “Not much ‘custom’ about that young waster.”
“Who is he?”