"Thanks; I've business there. I reckon to take care of myself."
Nevertheless it was with a mind preyed upon by forebodings that Amber stumbled down the cobbled way, reeking with filth, toward the establishment of Honest George. Why on earth should Labertouche make an appointment in so unholy a spot? Amber's doubts revived and he became more than half persuaded that this must be a snare devised by those acute intelligences which had instigated both the theft of the photograph and that snarled mock-benediction of the mendicant.
"I don't like it," he admitted ruefully; "it's so canny."
He stopped in front of a building whose squat brick facade was lettered with the reassuring sobriquet of its proprietor. A bench, running the width of the structure, was thick with sprawling loafers, who smoked and spat and spoke a jargon of the seas, the chief part of which was blasphemy. Within, visible through windows never closed, was a crowded barroom ablaze with flaring gas-jets, uproarious with voices thick with drink.
One needed courage of no common order to run the gauntlet of that rowdy room and brave the more secret dangers of the infamous den. "You've got to have your nerve with you," Amber put it. "But I suppose it's all in the game. Let's chance it." And he entered.
Compared with the atmosphere of that public-room a blast from Hell were sweet and cooling, thought Amber; the first whiff he had of it all but staggered him; and he found himself gasping, perspiration starting from every pore. Faint with disgust he elbowed his way through the mob to the bar, thankful that those about him, absorbed in the engrossing occupation of getting drunk, paid him not the least heed. Flattening himself against the rail he cast about for the proprietor. A blowsy, sweating barmaid caught his eye and without a word slapped down upon the sloppy counter before him a glass four fingers deep with unspeakable whiskey. And he realised that he would have to drink it; to refuse would be to attract attention, perhaps with unpleasant consequences. "It's more than I bargained for," he grumbled, making a pretence of swallowing the dose, and to his huge relief managing to spill two-thirds of it down the front of his coat. What he swallowed bit like an acid. Tears came to his eyes, but he choked down the cough, and as soon as he could speak paid the girl. "Where's the boss?" he asked.
"Who?" Her glance was penetrating. "Oh, he's wytin' for you." She
nodded, lifting a shrill voice. "Garge, O Garge! 'Ere's that Yankee."
With a bare red elbow she indicated the further end of the room.
"You'll find 'im down there," she said, her look not unkindly.
Amber thanked her quietly and, extricating himself from the press round the bar, made his way in the direction indicated. A couple of billiard tables with a small mob of onlookers hindered him, but by main strength and diplomacy he wormed his way past and reached the rear of the room. There were fewer loafers here and he had little hesitation about selecting from an attendant circle of sycophants the genius of the dive—Honest George himself, a fat and burly ruffian who filled to overflowing the inadequate accommodation of an armchair. Sitting thus enthroned in his shirt-sleeves, his greasy and unshaven red face irradiating a sort of low good-humour that was belied by the cold cunning of his little eyes, he fulfilled admirably the requirements of the role he played self-cast.
"'Ere, you!" he hailed Amber brusquely. "You're a 'ell of a job-'unter, ain't you? Mister Abercrombie's been wytin' for you this hour gone. 'Know the w'y upstairs?"
His tone was boisterous enough to fix upon Amber the attention of the knot of loafers round the arm-chair. Amber felt himself under the particular regard of a dozen pair of eyes, felt that his measure was taken and his identification complete. Displeased, he answered curtly: "No."