“What Club, sir?” asked the driver with the deference due to a man at once wealthy and mad.
“You won’t know it,” said Sir Charles kindly and still craning in a constrained manner out of the window. “By the way, why don’t they have a speaking-tube or something from inside to you people? It’s awkward turning one’s head outside like a snake. You won’t know it, but I’ll shout to you when we get to the bottom of St. James’s Street.”
The driver, now convinced that he had to do with something quite out of the ordinary, touched his cap in a manner almost military, and fled through the streets of London. At a Boy Messenger’s office Sir Charles sent home for clothes and for a change, got to his Club, informed the astonished porter that it was a very fine day, that he had just had a fight on the top of a bus, that by God the Johnnie didn’t know who he was tackling! He, Sir Charles, was no longer a young man, but he would have shown him what an upper cut was if he could have got a free swing! He proceeded to illustrate the nature of this fence—then suddenly asked for his letters, and for a dressing-room.
After this, which had all been acted in the most rapid and violent manner, he ran up the steps, stood for a few moments with his hands in his pockets gazing at the telegrams, and forgetful that he had no collar on, that his coat was torn, that there was blood upon his hands, and that half of his waistcoat was wide open with two buttons missing. He found the telegrams of some interest; he did not notice the glances directed towards him by those who passed in and out of the building, nor the act of a page who in passing the porter’s box tapped his forehead twice with his forefinger.
He stood for a moment in thought, then it suddenly occurred to him that it would have been a wiser thing to have gone straight home. He got another taxi and drove to his house. There, after a brief scene with the footman in which he rehearsed all that he had already given them at the Club, he ordered his clothes to be put out for him, and took a very comfortable bath.
Luckily for him he found lying upon his table when he came down, a note which he had left there the night before with regard to the Van Diemens meeting.
“Forgot that,” he said, a little seriously. “Good thing I found it.”
He picked it up, folded it once or twice, unfolded it, re-read it perhaps three times, and while he was so employed heard the grave voice of his secretary begging him to go into town in the motor.
Repton did not for the moment see any connection between his recent adventures and this request, but he was all compliance, and nodding cheerfully he waited for the machine to come round. When it had come he looked at it closely for a moment, confided to the chauffeur that he intensely disliked its colour, but that it was a bargain and he wasn’t going to spend any money on changing it, because he meant to sell it to some fool at the end of the season—got in, and was driven to the Cannon Street Hotel.
He was a little late. The platform was already occupied and his empty chair was waiting for him.