"Yes, and I've no time to bathe—ought to shave, though, and oh, damme,—look at my cravat!"
"You'll find everything you need in my dressing-room, Sling."
The Captain nodded his thanks, and forthwith vanished into the adjacent chamber, whence he was to be heard at his ablutions, puffing and blowing, grampus-like. To whom thus the Viscount, raising his voice: "Oh, by the way, Sling, Beverley wants to go with you." Here the Captain stopped, as it seemed in the very middle of a puff, and when he spoke it was in a tone of hoarse incredulity:
"Eh,—b'gad, what's that?"
"He wants you to introduce him to Jasper Gaunt."
Here a sudden explosive exclamation, and, thereafter, the Captain appeared as in the act of drying himself, his red face glowing from between the folds of the towel while he stared from the Viscount to Barnabas with round eyes.
"What!" he exclaimed at last, "you, too, Beverley! Poor devil, have you come to it—and so soon?"
"No," said Barnabas, shaking his head, "I wish to see him on behalf of another—"
"Eh? Another? Oh—!"
"On behalf of Mr. Ronald Barrymaine."