I
“It is a little difficult to know what to do with you, young man,” said Peterson gently, after a long silence. “I knew you had no tact.”
Drummond leaned back in his chair and regarded his host with a faint smile.
“I must come to you for lessons, Mr. Peterson. Though I frankly admit,” he added genially, “that I have never been brought up to regard the forcible abduction of a harmless individual and a friend who is sleeping off the effects of what low people call a jag as being exactly typical of that admirable quality.”
Peterson’s glance rested on the dishevelled man still standing by the door, and after a moment’s thought he leaned forward and pressed a bell.
“Take that man away,” he said abruptly to the servant who came into the room, “and put him to bed. I will consider what to do with him in the morning.”
“Consider be damned,” howled Mullings, starting forward angrily. “You’ll consider a thick ear, Mr. Blooming Knowall. What I wants to know——”
The words died away in his mouth, and he gazed at Peterson like a bird looks at a snake. There was something so ruthlessly malignant in the stare of the grey-blue eyes, that the ex-soldier who had viewed going over the top with comparative equanimity, as being part of his job, quailed and looked apprehensively at Drummond.
“Do what the kind gentleman tells you, Mullings,” said Hugh, “and go to bed.” He smiled at the man reassuringly. “And if you’re very, very good, perhaps, as a great treat, he’ll come and kiss you good night.”
“Now that,” he remarked as the door closed behind them, “is what I call tact.”