I took the negus and the cigar downstairs, and I said to Harry, “I shan’t go up again. Those two men are lunatics, I believe. They want lemonade and a halfpenny sweetstuff cigar now.”
Harry laughed, and said, “Go on—they’re chaffing you.”
“Well, I’m not going to be chaffed,” I said. So I called Jane, the waitress, who was just going to bed, poor girl, having to be up at six in the morning, and I said, “Jane, you must wait on No. 16, please.” And I gave her the lemonade.
She went up, and she was gone quite ten minutes. When she came down, I said, “Jane, whatever made you so long?”
“Oh, ma’am,” she said, “they’ve been asking me such things!”
“What have they been asking you, Jane?” I said, getting alarmed; for I was more than ever convinced the two men weren’t quite right.
“They’ve been asking me if ever there was a murder here, ma’am, and if there isn’t a silent pool in the wood where a body’s been found. And the stout gentleman says that the tall gentleman is mad, and he’s his keeper.”
“I knew it,” I screamed. And then I said, “Harry, I’m not going to bed to-night with a lunatic in the house. You must go upstairs and tell them to go. We are not licensed to receive lunatics, and I won’t have it.”
“Nonsense!” said Harry. “It’s only their nonsense. They’ve been chaffing Jane, that’s all. Don’t be a goose.”
“Well,” I said, “I shall ask them to-morrow to go somewhere else.”