George Manville Fenn
"Witness to the Deed"
Chapter One.
In Benchers’ Inn.
“My darling! Mine at last!” Ting-tang; ting-tang; ting-tang.
Malcolm Stratton, F.Z.S., naturalist, a handsome, dark-complexioned man of eight-and-twenty, started and flushed like a girl as he hurriedly thrust the photograph he had been apostrophising into his breast pocket, and ran to the deep, dingy window of his chambers to look at the clock over the old hall of Bencher’s Inn, E.C. It was an unnecessary piece of business, for there was a black marble clock on the old carved oak chimney-piece nestling among Grinling Gibbons’ wooden flowers and pippins, and he had been dragging his watch from his pocket every ten minutes since he had risen at seven, taken his bath, and dressed; but he had forgotten the hour the next minute, and gone on making his preparations, haunted by the great dread lest he should be too late.
“Quarter to ten yet,” he muttered. “How slowly the time goes!” As he spoke he sniffed slightly and smiled, for a peculiar aromatic incense-like odour had crept into the room through the chinks in a door.
He stepped back to where a new-looking portmanteau lay upon the Turkey carpet, and stood contemplating it for a few moments.