"I thought there was, sir," said the English waiter at that admirable hotel. Toye, however, prepared to talk to him like an American uncle of Dutch extraction.
"You thought that, and you took it away?"
"Not at all, sir. I 'appened to observe the other gentleman put the menu in his pocket, behind your back as you were getting up, because I passed a remark about it to the head waiter at the time!"
IX FAIR WARNING
It was much more than a map of the metropolis that Toye carried in his able head. He knew the right places for the right things, from his tailor's at one end of Jermyn Street to his hatter's at the other, and from the man for collars and dress shirts, in another of St. James', to the only man for soft shirts, on Piccadilly. Hilton Toye visited them all in turn this fine September morning, and found the select team agreeably disengaged, readier than ever to suit him. Then he gazed critically at his boots. He was not so dead sure that he had struck the only man for boots. There had been a young fellow aboard the Kaiser Fritz, quite a little bit of a military blood, who had come ashore in a pair of cloth tops that had rather unsettled Mr. Toye's mind just on that one point.
He thought of this young fellow when he was through with the soft-shirt man on Piccadilly. They had diced for a drink or two in the smoking-room, and Captain Aylmer had said he would like to have Toye see his club any time he was passing and cared to look in for lunch. He had said so as though he would like it a great deal, and suddenly Toye had a mind to take him at his word right now. The idea began with those boots with cloth tops, but that was not all there was to it; there was something else that had been at the back of Toye's mind all morning, and now took charge in front.
Aylmer had talked some about a job in the war office that enabled him to lunch daily at the Rag; but what his job had been aboard a German steamer Toye did not know and was not the man to inquire. It was no business of his, anyway. Reference to a card, traded for his own in Southampton Water, and duly filed in his cigarette-case, reminded him of the Rag's proper style and title. And there he was eventually entertained to a sound, workmanlike, rather expeditious meal.
"Say, did you see the cemetery at Genoa?" suddenly inquired the visitor on their way back through the hall. A martial bust had been admired extravagantly before the question.