'Going to you by first train.'
The next train left Windermere at three. There was just time to get a fresh horse put in the dogcart, and a Gladstone bag packed.
CHAPTER XLI.
PRIVILEGED INFORMATION.
Lord Hartfield did not arrive at Euston Square until near eleven o'clock at night. A hansom deposited him at the entrance to the Albany just as the clock of St. James's Church chimed the hour. He found only Maulevrier's valet. His lordship had waited indoors all the evening, and had only gone out a quarter of an hour ago. He had gone to the Cerberus, and begged that Lord Hartfield would be kind enough to follow him there.
Lord Hartfield was not fond of the Cerberus, and indeed deemed that lively place of rendezvous a very dangerous sphere for his friend Maulevrier; but in the face of Maulevrier's telegram there was no time to be lost, so he walked across Piccadilly and down St. James's Street to the fashionable little club, where the men were dropping in after the theatres and dinners, and where sheafs of bank notes were being exchanged for those various coloured counters which represented divers values, from the respectable 'pony' to the modest 'chip.'
Maulevrier was in the first room Hartfield looked into, standing behind some men who were playing.
'That's something like friendship,' he exclaimed, when he saw Lord Hartfield, and then he hooked his arm through his friend's, and led him off to the dining room.