By-and-by Paul Somerton insiduously got on the blind side of Mr. Fencer, and obtained permission to go and have a peep into the card-room; where Paul, through a half-opened door, saw Mr. Richard Tallant, Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, Mr. Hammerton, and another gentleman, seriously occupied at cards. There were several other little card parties in the room, but Paul had no eyes for any other table than that at which the Hon. Lionel Hammerton was seated. Earl Verner’s brother was evidently the greatest loser, though his partner, Mr. Tallant, was also betting heavily, and unsuccessfully it seemed, with the fourth gentleman, who was unknown to Paul.
This was enough for the present. Paul joined Fencer and Dibble again, making himself particularly agreeable to the former, and promising to pay him another visit on the first opportunity that occurred.
Meanwhile Paul cared for nothing more but to get back to Pimlico and to bed. There was something wrong going on, Paul was sure; he would write to Amy in the morning and reply fully to her inquiries.
Dibble was particularly communicative on the way home, on account of Fencer’s large dose of gin; he told Paul that he would stick to him till death, and tell him anything he knew. He believed Mister Gibbs was no better than a swindler, and his master’s son was surely a reprobate.
“You should have heard what Fencer told me private,” Dibble went on, nodding his head, and clinging hard and fast to Paul Somerton’s arm: “that Mister Gentleman Gibbs is a sort of Jeremy Diddler, sir, depend on it; and master’s son is, they do say, the fastest man about town.”
“Indeed! all right, Dib. I’ll hold you up, old boy,” said Paul, as Dibble plunged and fought his way through an imaginary crowd of obstructions.
Dibble gradually becoming helpless, Paul was compelled to call a cab; and they reached Still Street just in time to find Mrs. Dibble alone and in good humour.
But a change rapidly came over the salubrious calm when Mrs. Dibble noticed Thomas’s neck-tie twisted round to the back of his neck, and saw him gazing at her in a helpless state of idiotic admiration and amazement.
Turning upon Paul she poured out such a volley of declamation against deceit, and the leading of innocence into temptation and sin, that Paul was fain to rush off to bed, and leave poor Dibble to contend with the remainder of the storm. He heard the matrimonial tempest raging for fully an hour after he had retired, until at length it gradually subsided, and peace was proclaimed in the sonorous snore of Dibblonian repose.
It was long past midnight when the last card-party at the Ashford Club broke up. Young Hammerton and Richard Tallant left together, and Hammerton accepted the offer of a bed at Mr. Tallant’s house in Connaught Place, where a cab soon deposited them.