Another silence was about to congeal, when a taxi crawled up and the two exquisites leaped joyously in.
“Awful, a fellow going right under like that,” said the first.
“Ghastly,” said the second.
“Lucky we got away.”
“Yes.”
“He was shaping for a touch,” said the first exquisite.
“Trembling on his lips,” said the second.
Sam walked on. Although the Messrs. Bates and Tresidder had never been favourites of his, they belonged to what Mr. Braddock would have called—and, indeed, had called no fewer than eleven times in his speech that night—the dear old school; and the meeting with them had left him pleasantly stimulated. The feeling of being a seigneur revisiting his estates after long absence grew as he threaded his way through the crowd. He eyed the passers-by in a jolly, Laughing Cavalier sort of way, wishing he knew them well enough to slap them on the back. And when he reached the corner of Wellington Street and came upon a disheveled vocalist singing mournfully in the gutter, he could not but feel it a personal affront that this sort of thing should be going on in his domain. He was conscious of a sensation of being individually responsible for this poor fellow’s reduced condition, and the situation seemed to him to call for largess.
On setting out that night Sam had divided his money into two portions. His baggage, together with his letter of credit, had preceded him across the ocean on the Mauretania; and as it might be a day or so before he could establish connection with it, he had prudently placed the bulk of his ready money in his note-case, earmarking it for the purchase of new clothes and other necessaries on the morrow so that he might be enabled to pay his first visit to Tilbury House in becoming state. The remainder, sufficient for the evening’s festivities, he had put in his trousers pockets.
It was into his right trousers pocket therefore that he now groped. His fingers closed on a half-crown. He promptly dropped it. He was feeling seigneurial, but not so seigneurial as that. Something more in the nature of a couple of coppers was what he was looking for, and it surprised him to find that except for the half-crown the pocket appeared to be empty. He explored the other pocket. That was empty too.