“He’ll want a bit of looking after, I take it.”
“Seems to me he is uncommonly capable of taking care of himself. The rest of the establishment will want looking after, though.”
From this time forth the mysterious gentleman began to regularly take the air and to be remarked, and having once remarked him, people looked again.
Mr Francis Beveridge, for such it appeared was his name, was distinguished even for Clankwood. Though his antecedents were involved in mystery, so much confidence [pg 21] was placed in Dr Congleton’s discrimination that the unknown stranger was at once received on the most friendly terms by every one; and, to tell the truth, it would have been hard to repulse him for long. His manner was perfect, his conversation witty to the extremest verge of propriety, and his clothes, fashionable in cut and of unquestionable fit, bore on such of the buttons as were made of metal the hall mark of a leading London firm. He wore the longest and most silky moustaches ever seen, and beneath them a short well-tended beard completed his resemblance—so the ladies declared—to King Charles of unhappy memory. The melancholic Mr Jones (quondam author of ‘Sunflowers—A Lyrical Medley’) declared, indeed, that for Mr Beveridge shaving was prohibited, and darkly whispered “suicidal,” but his opinion was held of little account.
It was upon a morning about a week after his arrival that Dr Escott, alone in the billiard-room, saw him enter. Escott had by this time made his acquaintance, and, like almost everybody else, had already succumbed to the fascination of his address.
“Good morning, doctor,” he said; “I wish you to do me a trifling favour, a mere bending of your eyes.”
Escott laughed.
“I shall be delighted. What is it?”
Mr Beveridge unbuttoned his waistcoat and displayed his shirt-front.
“I only want you to be good enough to read the inscription written here.”