For three weeks he had endured the torture this last time, Strange thought with grim pity, as he watched him, through the heavy Eastern curtains, devouring his food to the dropping of tears.
“Poor beggar! I shall never be able to get rid of him as long as life holds whatever morsel of soul he may have in him. Meanwhile, I cannot stand that solitary fang; when he has got over his brew I shall get him a set of teeth.”
He lay back and laughed. “They’ll be the ruin of his immortal soul, those teeth; fancy the grin of the fellow when his lips have a resisting surface to stretch across! Brown will charge frightfully for filling such a cavern.”
He laughed again and turned to his work, and in two hours he had the first batch of “copy” ready for the printer. Then he yawned and stretched, and apologized to the barber, whom he had kept waiting an hour and ten minutes.
When he was shaved, he dressed, and set forth to resume civilization.
CHAPTER XVII.
When he got outside his rooms, which were in a turning off Piccadilly, Strange looked up and down the street and at his watch.
“I shall not bother with luncheon, that ham will last till eight,” he said, “I shall go to the Club and I suppose I must see Aunt Moll. I’ll go there to tea, she’ll be up probably, and perhaps awake by that time.”
He struck out for his Club and made a rapid tour of the premises but he found there was no good to be got there, the billiard-rooms were empty and the reading-rooms were given over to half a dozen old fellows suffering from gout and senile decay.
“It’s too early and too late for anything,” he muttered, as he lighted a fresh cigar on the steps, “it will be a full week, besides, before I get into the swing again. I shall try Brydon.”