“Not a stick left when I come back on the scene!” related Mr. Lock. “I’d like to have had something to remember him by, too. Relation of mine, you know, he was. ‘Peter,’ he used to say to me, ‘Peter, I particular wants you to have my old arm-chair when I’m gone.’ Always saying that, he was. Why he couldn’t have given it to me while he was alive, and have done with it, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps he didn’t want to part with it?” suggested Mr. Lane.
“That was about it, I expect,” agreed Mr. Lock. “He’d certainly got a great fancy for that chair. Why, he used to carry it into the bedroom with him at night, and bring it down again in the morning. But, there, it had clean gone when I got back here.”
“Couldn’t you find out who’d bought it?”
“I did try, sir, but it was no good. You see, it was just a sort of Dutch auction, and people paid their money down for anything they bought, and took it straight away. There was a lot of strangers present, too, far as I could make out, and it must have been one of them that bought that old chair. A chap from the country, some of ’em told me. Dare say that old chair’s not more than five miles away at this minute, if the truth was known.”
“Why don’t you—haven’t you advertised for it?”
“Oh, I ain’t so keen on it as all that, sir,” replied Mr. Lock, carelessly. “I can remember the old chap well enough, without needing his old arm-chair to remind me of him. I don’t believe in being sentimental, sir, when it costs money, and a advertisement would cost more than that old chair’s worth. Besides, he won’t know now whether I’ve got it or not, and, if he does, it can’t make much difference to him, can it, sir?”
With these practical remarks, Mr. Lock turned again to the billiard-table for interest. Mr. Lane, after sitting meditatively for a long three minutes, rose and unostentatiously quitted the room.
The saloon was well patronized when, a couple of hours later, Mr. Horace Dobb strolled in. His eyes sought Mr. Lock’s, and, meeting them, a slight upward flicker of the brows was perceptible. Mr. Lock nodded slowly, once, and Mr. Dobb drifted out again.
About ten minutes later Mr. Lane, his arms folded and his head bent in reverie, was occupying his accustomed seat in the bar-parlour of the “King’s Arms,” when a patron entered with a certain reckless joviality which compelled attention. Mr. Lane, glancing up petulantly at this intrusion on his meditations, recognized the new-comer to be a gentleman who dealt in second-hand goods at an establishment in Fore Street.