'I beg your pardon,' said the voice again, and the clerk looked up and found that it belonged to a slim gentleman in a pale gray suit, and with a soft black-felt hat on his head, and carrying a small bag in his hand. 'Two days ago I came by the noon express from Euston,' said the gentleman, 'and booked my portmanteau to Liverpool; but being taken ill, I was compelled to get out at Edge-hill, and so my luggage came on without me. A brown portmanteau, bearing the name of Dunn--shall I have the good luck to find it here?'
'If it is here you will, sir,' growled the clerk, dying to get back to the way-bill. 'Two days ago, you say; brown portmanteau, name of Dunn? Here you are.'
'I am very much obliged to you, indeed,' said the gentleman.
'Going by cab or train, sir?' said the clerk shortly.
'By cab, if you please, to--'
'Here, Jim,' called the clerk to a passing porter, 'put this portmanteau on a cab for the gentleman. Parson out for a holiday, I should think,' he said, muttering to himself, looking after the passenger, who was following his luggage; 'they always try to get out of uniform, but are frightened to get into anything louder than gray.'
Mr. Dunn saw his portmanteau placed upon the cab, and, giving the porter sixpence, bade him tell the driver to go to the Adelphi Hotel. He looked hard at the porter's face while he spoke to him, as he had looked from under his overhanging brow at the clerk in the cloak-room, as he looked at the cabman when, after taking a note of the number of the vehicle, he descended in front of the Adelphi.
As he advanced quickly to the glass case in which are enshrined the presiding goddesses of the establishment, he was struck with a sudden chill; he shivered violently and shrugged his shoulders, and rubbed his hands together as he stood asking whether he could be accommodated with two rooms--a sitting-room and bedroom--leading out of one another.
'Certainly, sir,' was the gracious reply. 'Show ten and eleven, Charles. You seem to be very cold, sir?'
'I have taken a chill, I think,' said Mr. Dunn, pausing at the bottom of the stairs and looking round. 'I come from a climate where frost and east winds are unknown, and if I mistake not, there is a fine specimen of the latter raging through your streets just now.'