"Oh, then, I'll call another time."
"No, you may come in, father. Lord Silverdale and I have finished our business for the day. You can take that away with you and read it at your leisure, Lord Silverdale."
The millionaire came in, but without empressement.
That night Lord Silverdale, who was suffering from insomnia, took the manuscript to bed with him, but he could not sleep till he had finished it.
I, Anton Mendoza, bachelor, born thirty years ago by the grace of the Holy Virgin, on the fête-day of San Anton, patron of pigs and old maids, after sundry adventures by sea and land, found myself in the autumn of last year in the pestiferous atmosphere of London. I had picked up bad English and a good sum of money in South America, and by the aid of the two was enabled to thread my way through the mazes of the metropolis. I soon tired of the neighborhood of the Alhambra (in the proximity of which I had with mistaken patriotism established myself), for the wealthy quarters of all great cities have more affinities than differences, and after a few days of sight-seeing I resolved to fare forth in quest of the real sights of London. Mounting the box of the first omnibus that came along, I threw the reins of my fortunes into the hands of the driver, and drew a little blue ticket from the lottery of fate. I scanned the slip of paper curiously and learned therefrom that I was going fast to "The Angel," which I shrewdly divined to be a public-house, knowing that these islanders display no poetry and imagination save in connection with beer. My intuition was correct, and though it was the forenoon I alighted amid a double stream of pedestrians, the one branch flowing into "The Angel," and the other issuing therefrom. Extricating myself, I looked at my compass, and following the direction of the needle soon found myself in a network of unlovely streets. For an hour I paced forwards without chancing on aught of interest, save many weary organ-grinders, seemingly serenading their mistresses with upward glances at their chamber-windows, and I was commencing to fear that my blue ticket would prove a blank, when a savory odor of garlic struck on my nostrils and apprised me that my walk had given me an appetite. Glancing sideways I saw a door swinging, the same bearing in painted letters on the glass the words: "Menotti's Restaurant—Ici on parle Francais." It looked a queer little place, and the little back street into which I had strayed seemed hardly auspicious of cleanly fare. Still the jewel of good cookery harbors often in the plainest caskets, and I set the door swinging again and passed into a narrow room walled with cracked mirrors and furnished with a few little tables, a rusty waiter, and a proprietorial looking person perpetually bent over a speaking tube. As noon was barely arrived, I was not surprised to find the place all but empty. At the extreme end of the restaurant I caught a glimpse of a stout dark man with iron-gray whiskers. I thought I would go and lunch at the table of the solitary customer and scrape acquaintance, and thus perhaps achieve an adventure. But hardly had I seated myself opposite him than a shock traversed his face, the morsel he had just swallowed seemed to stick in his throat, he rose coughing violently, and clapping his palm over his mouth with the fingers spread out almost as if he wished to hide his face, turned his back quickly, seized his hat, threw half-a-crown to the waiter and scuttled from the establishment.
He scuttled from the Establishment.
I was considerably surprised at his abrupt departure, as if I had brought some infection with me. The momentary glimpse I had caught of his face had convinced me I had never seen it before, that it had no place in the photograph album of my brain, though now it would be fixed there forever. The nose hooked itself on to my memory at once. It must be that he had mistaken me for somebody else, somebody whom he had reason to fear. Perhaps he was a criminal and imagined me a detective. I called the proprietor and inquired of him in French who the man was and what was the matter with him. But he shook his head and answered: "That man there puzzles me. There is a mystery behind."
"Why, has he done anything strange before to-day?"