“Young Calmour, a clerk at Pownall and Skreet’s. I only wonder they haven’t given him the sack long ago.”
“I must say he brought it upon himself,” said the man who had been “standing” him. “Bob can be pretty abusive when he’s got anything on board. Mine? Oh, thanks; another Scotch, I think. Here’s luck.”
The landlord’s answer had given Develin Hunt food for thought, not for astonishment; he had seen too many queer phases of life to be astonished at anything. So this egregious young pup stood in the relationship of brother to the exceedingly pretty and even refined-looking girl he had seen with Wagram and his party in Hilversea park some Sundays ago! It seemed hardly credible, but then, as we have said, he was astonished at nothing.
He had not spent all the intervening time in Bassingham, where at the Golden Crown he was very popular, and instrumental in an increase of custom; for he was open-handed in setting up “rounds,” and could tell strange, wild stories of strange, wild lands and stranger, wilder people, and this led to an increasing roll up of the good citizens of Bassingham of an evening. But he had not as yet made acquaintance with old Calmour, for the very good reason that that worthy had transferred his custom elsewhere, from motives that may be readily divined.
Now, although Haldane had not seen Develin Hunt the latter had seen Haldane. It was a mere glimpse snatched between the swing doors as they let out the obnoxious Bob; but in the school which had afforded the African adventurer his life training a mere glimpse to him was as good as half-an-hour’s scrutiny to most men, and to this one and his plans it now made all the difference in the world.
“Who was the man I shot that young pup against?” he said. “Tallish man, sunburnt face, and riding-gaiters?”
“Squire Haldane, worse luck!” answered the landlord.
“Why ‘worse luck’?”
“He’s a magistrate. He don’t often show up in Bassingham, and now, when he does, get’s nearly knocked down by a chump fired out of my bar in the middle of the morning. Maybe he’ll have a word to say, when licensing day comes round, that I keep my house rowdy.”
“Shouldn’t think he’d do that, Smith, he looks too much of a sportsman. I’ll bet drinks all round that man has been in countries where firing anyone out doesn’t constitute the liveliest side of a bar worry.”