'He was took ... he went away with a friend a good half-hour ago, sir,' the porter added, with a curious smile.
The smile did not escape the questioner's glance, and, in consequence of it, Trist went upstairs to the smoking-room. He was not a member of the club, but his name was a power in military circles.
The information he gathered from friends upstairs was not of an encouraging nature. One young blade, with downy lip and weak, dissipated eyes, volunteered the statement that Huston had gone home to his diggings as tight as a drum. This news was apparently of an hilarious drift, because the youthful speaker finished with a roar of throaty laughter. An older man looked up over his evening paper, and nodded a grave acquiescence in reply to Trist's raised eyebrows.
'Does anybody know his address?' inquired the correspondent.
Nobody did.
Upon inquiry at the door, Trist made the discovery that the porter had fortunately been asked to give the direction to the driver of the cab in which Huston had been taken away. The address was one hardly known to the war-correspondent—a small street, leading out of another small street, near the Strand.
In his calm way he suddenly determined to follow Huston. He lighted a cigar at the spirit-lamp affixed to the door-post, and then called a cab.
'I am not,' he reflected with some truth as he descended the steps, 'I am not an imaginative person, nor very highly strung; but .... I feel .... somehow .... as if something were going to happen.'
There was a considerable delay in the Strand, where the traffic was much congested owing to the out-pouring theatres. A fog was hovering round the lamps already, and would soon envelop everything. The first keen frost of the season was at hand, with its usual disastrous effects to London lungs. Amidst the confusion, the roar of traffic, the deafening shouts of drivers, policemen, and runners with latest editions of evening papers, Trist sat forward, with his arms upon the closed door of the hansom, and enjoyed his cigar. All this rush of life and confusion of humanity thrilled him. He almost felt as if he were at work again, making his way to the front through the wild mêlée of a disorganized and retreating army; cavalry and infantry, baggage and artillery, all hopelessly inter-mingled. As he progressed he noted with admiration the cool skill of the policemen, each man alone acting on his own responsibility, and yet connected by the invisible links of discipline.
At length the driver escaped into a narrow street, and, turning sharply to the right, drew up before a tall narrow house, bearing, on a dingy lamp above the door, the legend 'No. 32, Private Hotel.' A hopeless waiter, with shuffling shoes and a shirt-front of uncertain antecedents, answered the summons of a melancholy bell, which seemed to tinkle under strong protest, and as briefly as possible.