The fellow regarded him and ventured to go on: "I was witness for the police and Mr. Gillett, and he--Steele," with a curse, "had me on the stand. He knows every rook and welsher and every swell magsman, and all their haunts and habits. And he knows me--blame--" he made use of another expression more forcible--"if he don't know me as well as if he'd once been a pal. And now," in an injured tone, "Mr. Gillett calls me hard names for bringing discredit, as he terms it, on the force."
"What's this to me?"
The fellow stopped short in what he was saying; his small eyes glistened and he took a step forward. "Your lordship remembers the 'Frisco Pet? Your lordship remembers him?" he repeated, thrusting an alert face closer.
"I believe there was a prize-fighter of that name," was the calm reply.
"I say!" The fellow let his jaw fall slightly; he gazed at the nobleman with mingled shrewdness and admiration. "Your lordship remembers him only," with an accent, "as a patron of sport. Tossed a quid on him"--with a look of full meaning--"as your lordship would a bone to a dog. Perhaps," gaining in audacity, "your lordship would be so generous as to throw one or two now at one he once favored with his bounty."
"I--favored you? You lie!" The answer was concise; it cut like a lash; it robbed the man once more of all his hardihood. He slunk back.
"Very good," he muttered.
Lord Ronsdale turned and with a sharp swish of his cane walked on. The other, his eyes resentfully bright, looked after the tall, aristocratic, slowly departing figure.
As the nobleman ascended the steps of his club he seemed again to be thinking deeply; within, his preoccupation did not altogether desert him. In a corner, with the big pages of the Times before him, he read with scant interest the doings of the day; even a perennial telegram concerning a threatened invasion of England did not awaken momentary interest. He passed it over as casually as he did the markets, or a grudging, conservative item from the police courts, all that the blue pencil had left of the hopeful efforts of some poor penny-a-liner. From the daily fulminator he had turned to the weekly medium of fun and fooling, when, from behind another paper, the face of a gray-haired, good-natured appearing person, quite different off the bench, chanced to look out at him.
"Eh? That you, Ronsdale?" he said, reaching for a steaming glass of hot beverage at his elbow. "What do you think of it, this talk of an invasion by the Monseers?"