Travellers in Mayfair will have noticed that every here and there old-fashioned, snug looking hostelries exist in out-of-the-way places—at the corner of a mews, in a private street, where they do not seem to belong; and they are generally kept by ex-butlers, who have taken wives, joined their savings, and gone into business with the brewers’ help.
In the parlour of the “Four-in-Hand,” Lower Maybush street, a party of gentlemen’s servants were playing bagatelle upon a bad board in a very smoky atmosphere, while a knot of three men sat at one of the old, narrow, battered mahogany tables in a corner, drinking cold gin and water, and smoking bad cigars.
One was a little sharp-eyed, round-headed man, smartly dressed, and evidently rather proud of a large gilt pin in his figured silk tie. Another was tall and not ill-looking; he might have been a valet, for there was a certain imitation gentility about his cut—a valet whose master had been rather addicted to the turf, and this had been reflected on his man to the extent of trousers rather too tight, short hair, and a horseshoe pin with pearl nails. The third was rather a shabby-looking man of forty, undoubtedly a gentleman’s servant out of place, carrying the sign in the front of the reason why, in the shape of a nose unduly ripened by being bathed in glasses of alcoholic drink.
“Knew him how long, did you say?” said the tall man, tapping his chin with an ivory-handled rattan-cane.
“Ten years, poor chap,” said the ex-servant. “It was very horrid.”
“Here, never mind that,” said the brisk little man. “We don’t want horrors. Touch the bell, Dick. Come, old fellow, sip up your lotion, and we’ll have them filled again. That cigar don’t draw. Try one of these. Here! three fours of gin cold,” he cried to the landlord, and as soon as the glasses were refilled, and cigars lighted, the conversation went on, to the accompaniment of rattling balls and laughter from the bagatelle players.
“Well,” said the tall man, in a low voice, “you can do as you like, my lad, but I should have thought that, hard up as you are, and I should say without much chance of getting another crib—say at present—you’d have been glad to earn a honest quid or two.”
The shabby-looking man shook his head.
“Here, you’re always putting on the pace too much, Dick,” said the little man. “A fellow wants a little time. He’s on, you see if he isn’t. My respects to you, Mr Barnes. Hah! nice flavoured drop of gin that.”
“You see, you know the house well,” continued the tall man. “Often been, of course?”