After seeing his fiancée to her home, Lamont set out along the irregular street, which followed the meandering of the river, towards his lodgings. The brightly illumined window of a saloon attracted his attention, and allured him to enter for a chat with the proprietor on latest matters of local interest. So he came into the smoky bar, where the usual throng of deadbeats—broken-down English gentlemen for the most part—were talking or shouting, according to the amount of liquor imbibed. Some of the figures that loomed through the thick cloud of smoke were decidedly unsteady. Very prominent among this latter class was a certain individual of cadaverous complexion and yellow moustache, at the sight of whom Lamont started with a short oath of gratification. The man was unquestionably Peter Denton.
He quickly nodded to the bar-tender, who knew him, then passed to a side room, where those who placarded themselves in the outer world as exclusive devotees to the cause of temperance were wont to be served in strict privacy. Here the wielder of the cocktail flasks soon joined him, with the usual salutation, 'How goes it?'
'Who's the chap over there, that one with the sandy hair?' asked Lamont, pointing towards the bar through the drifting smoke.
'That? Just a crazy sort of ranting fellow. Ter'ble drunken lot he is, too.'
The other laughed in his self-satisfied manner. 'See here,' he said, catching at the bar-tender's shirt sleeve, 'I've been after him since last fall. He made off with some shiners of mine. Guess they're stowed at his lodgings, if he hasn't got away with them all.'
'You don't say,' said the man, making an accurate shot through the fog at a distant spittoon. 'He looks a crooked tool, right enough. Still, I've not heard much talk against him, and long as he can pay for liquor, it's not my biz to speak. What'll I do?'
'Load him up. I'll stand the racket.'
'I tell you, he can take a fancy quantity. What's the plan?'
'When he's too raddled to know me, I'll offer to see him home.'
'Then search round the shanty for the dosh?'