"Then I'll wait till he comes," said Dick Bellamy, taking a step forward in spite of the door and the footman's hand upon it.
"Impossible to see Mr. Bruffin to-night—sir," said Charles. "I'm afraid I must ask you to step outside."
His vision of what might be in those bloated pockets was only a little less alarming than the reality.
But Dick felt he had only a drop or so of physical energy left; and so, lest they should trickle from him, he used them now.
And Charles, lifted most disconcertingly by the slack of his breeches and the stiffness of his resisting neck, was shifted quickly and painfully to the doorstep, to hear the door close upon him before he could turn to face it.
The house was new, even to its owners. Its rebuilding and exquisite refitting had been a marvel for the magpie chorus of the occasional column. The public already knew more of his new house than George Bruffin could ever forget.
But Dick, who never read more of a newspaper than he must, knew only its address and the day when George and his wife should go into residence. This, he had remembered, was the first day of their second week, and, even if George had already learned his way to his own study, Dick must find means to reach him more expeditious than geographical exploration.
He looked about him, and his eye fell upon a thing of which George had told him with pride almost boyish; a framework of shell-cases, graduated from the slender treble of a shortened soizante-quinze to the deepest base of a full-length monster from some growling siege-gun.
For George had done his portion of fighting and had collected this material for a dinner gong, on which one might play with padded stick anything from the "Devil's Tattoo" to "Caller Herrin'" or the "Wedding March."
From the doorstep, the frantic Charles, with eyes rolling, saw the taxi. What was in it he could not see, for the chauffeur stood blocking the open window, watching, it appeared, whatever the cab might contain—wild Bolshevists with bombs, perhaps, or soft litters of pedigree pups.