“God love yer, may I shove the tumbler if ever I was one to squeak!” said the frieze-clad gentleman indignantly. He shook the contents of the purse out on to the table and began to tell over the coins.
Lethbridge’s lip curled. “You can spare yourself the pains. I pay what I promised.”
The man grinned more knowingly than ever. “Ah, you’re a peevy cull, you are. And when I works with a flash, why, I’m careful, see?” He told over the rest of the money, scooped it all up in one capacious paw, and bestowed it in his pocket. “Right it is,” he observed genially, “and easy earned. I’ll let myself out of the jigger.”
Lethbridge followed him into the narrow hall. “No doubt,” he said. “But I will give myself the pleasure of seeing you off the premises.”
“God love yer, do you take me for a mill ken?” demanded the visitor, affronted. “Lordy, them as is on the rattling lay don’t take to slumming kens!” With which lofty but somewhat obscure remark he took himself off down the steps of the house and slouched away towards Piccadilly.
Lord Lethbridge shut the door and stood for a moment in frowning silence. He was aroused from his abstraction by the approach of his valet, who came up the stairs from the basement to attend him and remarked with concern that the rain had wetted his lordship’s coat.
The frown cleared. “So I perceive,” Lethbridge said. “But it was undoubtedly worth it.”
Chapter Eight
It was past five o’clock when Horatia arrived in Grosvenor Square, and upon hearing the time from the porter, she gave a small shriek of dismay, and fled upstairs. In the upper hall she almost collided with Rule, already dressed for the opera. “Oh, my l-lord, such an adventure!” she said, breathlessly. “I am horribly l-late, or I would tell you now. Do p-pray forgive me! I w-won’t be above a moment!”
Rule watched her vanish into her own room, and proceeded on his way downstairs. Apparently having very little dependence on his wife’s notions of time, he sent a message to the kitchens that dinner was to be set back half an hour, and strolled into one of the saloons to await Horatia’s reappearance. The fact that the opera began at seven did not seem to worry him in the least, and not even when the hands of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece stood at a quarter to six did he betray any sign of impatience. Below the stairs the cook, hovering anxiously between a couple of fat turkey poults on the spits and a dish of buttered crab, called down uncouth curses on the heads of all women.