"It's worth a hundred and fifty, your grace," said Mr. Bevan, as he repeated the conditions which were laid down to him.
"Sefen and sixpence," said the Duke with a gentle smile, "if what I have told you already was all indeed"—and having said that he gave time for it to soak in.
Mr. Bevan changed his hat from one hand to the other, then held it in both hands and said he was sure he didn't mean to say more than one should say, and he would certainly leave it to the Duke, who nodded and answered him:
"That is good—that is right. For this reason I make it a hundred; and if he does nothing as you want, you shall see him do, and you shall be a witness."
"I can't make a man do anything worth telling you, my lord," said Mr. Bevan rather surlily.
"Why, then," said the Duke of Battersea, approaching his wrists and opening his hands widely outwards, "how can I either pay?"
Mr. Bevan sighed unpleasantly and was content.
He left the Presence before two o'clock, but such was his intimacy with more than one of the servants that it was half-past two in the morning before he was clear of Barnett House. He did not wait for the tardy advent of the winter dawn; he was home before three; he then and there put on his professional boots, to the soles of which were attached small pads of india-rubber. He secreted upon his person a small revolver, a yet smaller electric lantern, £5 in change in case the hunt should take him far afield, a flask of Scotch whiskey, a box of fusees, some cigarettes such as are smoked by the landed classes, two good cigars, five cheap ones, a little Craven mixture in one side of his tobacco pouch and some peculiarly vile shag in the other. He put on a waistcoat within the lining of which his true name and address were inscribed upon a linen pad, thrust into his breast pocket an envelope bearing a false name and address, and put into a visiting card case certain visiting cards bearing yet a third name and address, that of one Hilling, a commercial traveller in the Seven Sisters Road; others inscribed Mr. John Hilling, Captain 47th Fusiliers, Rochester, he also secreted in various pockets, and a few more in which the same name was played upon in other ways.
The reader will be surprised to hear that after these preparations he put upon his head a billycock hat of the most demonstrative type, and committed the imprudence of wearing a large, made-up blue tie. But genius, however universal, however disciplined and experienced, is human. It is easy to criticise a fault in detail; it is more difficult to reproduce the general plan of the master; and those who may be disposed to ridicule the large made-up tie of Mr. Bevan, or the billycock hat which I have gone so far as to call demonstrative, would do well to ask themselves whether they would have had the learning or the intuition to provide themselves—I mention but one point—with cigarettes such as are smoked by the landed gentry, with Craven mixture upon one side of the tobacco pouch and with a peculiarly vile shag upon the other; yet Mr. Bevan had thought of these things!
A few glasses of hot whiskey and water to prepare him for the ordeal were rapidly swallowed—for Mr. Bevan, like most men of acute intelligence, was a moderate drinker—and he went out into the night. It was a little after four o'clock.