“I remember to have seen the name, I think,” Will answered, with a slight internal shudder, well pleased, none the less, to give some tardy salve to his companion’s wounded vanity. “I’m glad you’ve got on, and delighted to find you have such kindly recollections of me.”
Franz Lindner laughed. “Oh, zat!” he said, snapping his fingers in the air very jauntily. “I was a hot young man zen; I knew little of ze world. You mustn’t sink much of what a young man did in ze days before he knew how Society is managed. I owe you no grudge. We were bose of us younger. Besides, our friend Hausberger has wiped out our old scores. I have transferred to him, entire, all my feelings in ze matter.”
“That’s well,” Will replied, anxious indeed to learn whether the Tyroler had heard anything fresh of late years about Linnet. “And Hausberger himself? What of him . . . and his wife? Have you ever knocked up against them?”
The Robbler’s brow gathered; his hand clenched his cane hard. It was clear civilisation and cosmopolitanism, however neatly veneered, hadn’t made much serious change in his underlying nature. “Zat rascal!” he exclaimed, bringing his stick down on the pavement with a noisy little thud; “zat rogue; zat liar! If ever I had come across him, it would be bad for his head. Sousand devils, what a man! . . . Here, we’re close to ze Cri; will you come and have a drink? We can talk zis over afterward. I like to offer somesing to a friend new discovered.”
“It’s not much in my line,” Will answered, smiling; “but still, for old times’ sake, I’ll go in and have a glass with you.” To say the truth, he was so eager to find out what Franz might have to communicate that he stretched a point for once, and broke through his otherwise invariable rule never to drink anything anywhere except at meal times.
Franz stalked along Piccadilly, and strode airily into the Criterion like one who knew his way well about the London restaurants. “What’ll you take?” he asked of Will in an assured tone, which showed the question in English was a very familiar one to him.
“Whatever you take yourself,” Will answered, much amused, for the Tyroler was far more at home than himself in a London bar, and far more at his ease with the London barmaid.
“Two half porters and two small Scotch, miss,” the Robbler cried briskly to the tousely-haired young woman who attended to his call. “You’ll find it a very good mixture for zis time of day, Mr Deverill. I always take it myself. It softens ze organ.”
The young woman fulfilled the order with unwonted alacrity—Franz was a favourite at the bar, and gave his commands leaning across it with the arch smile of an habitué—and Will then discovered that the mixture in question consisted of a glass of Dublin stout, well fortified with a thimbleful of Highland whisky. He also observed, what he had not at first sight noticed, that Franz Lindner’s face, somewhat redder than of old, bore evidence, perhaps, of too frequent efforts for the softening of the organ. Franz nodded to the barmaid.
“Here’s our meeting!” he said to Will. “Shall we step a little aside here? We can talk wisout overhearing.”