"This fellow" was a short, square-built man of about fifty years of age, with sunken eyes, a sharp-pointed nose, and a close-cut beard, the original red colour of which was fast fading into gray. His seedy clothes were of a foreign and fantastic cut, and round his neck he wore a long, dirty-white cravat, folded quite flat, and wonderfully neatly tied, and fastened in front with a flashy mock pin. "This fellow" had been hanging round the table for some time, dodging in and out so as to get a better view of its occupant in the dim light. At length, when Gilbert Lloyd raised his head and looked up at the strange figure, "this fellow" seemed to be satisfied, and shambling up to the table, placed his hands upon it, leaned over, and said in a thick, husky voice,
"Gilbert Lloyd!"
Lloyd looked at him steadily, and then said, "That's my name; who are you?"
"I thought you would not know me," said the stranger with a laugh, "none of my old pals do; at least, most don't, and some won't, so it don't make much--"
"Stay," interrupted Lloyd; "I know you now; knew you directly you threw your head back and I saw your cravat. There's only one man in the world can tie a neckerchief like that, or get its folds to lie as flat. You're Foxey Walker."
"I am that same," said the stranger; "at least, I was when I was alive, for I'm nothing but a blessed old ghost now, I verily believe.--Here, you fellow, bring some brandy; Cognac, you know!--I ain't of much 'count now, Lloyd, and that's a fact." He was shabby and bloated and shaky, altogether very different from the tight, trim little Foxey, who was found leaning over the rails on Brighton Esplanade at the commencement of this story.
"Ah, I remember," said Lloyd; "you came to grief the Derby before last, in the Prior's year?"
"I did so. Went a regular mucker. That was a bad business, sir; a regular bad business. I could show you my book now. There were men that I dropped my money to over that Epsom Meetin' that had owed me hundreds--ay, hundreds on other events. I'd always given them time, much as they wanted, I had; but when I asked 'em for it then--for I had a rattlin' good book for Ascot, and some good things later on in the season--O no, not a bit of it! 'Pay up,' they says, 'pay up!' All devilish fine; I couldn't pay up--so I bolted."
"Ah, recollect perfectly your being proclaimed a defaulter," said Lloyd pleasantly. "It made rather a talk at the time, you were so well known. What have you been doing since?"
"Well, I've been cadgin' about on the Continent, doin' what I could to keep body and soul together.--You're goin' to pay for this brandy, you know? I suppose you don't mind standin' another go? all right.--But there's little enough to be done. I ain't much good at cards; and, besides, there's nothing to be done with them unless you get among the swells in the clubs and that, and that's not likely; and there's not much to be picked up off the foreigners at billiards, let alone their not playing our game. I've won a little on the red and black here and there, and I've come across an old friend now and again who's helped me with a fiver or so."