"I say, Reggie, old fellow, Eugene and I have been making up our minds whom we'll slaughter. Whom do you think we've decided on?"
"My dear Teddy, I haven't the faintest notion. Don't you think you'd better take a chair?"
"Thank you, old boy, I think I will." He took one just in time. "We've decided on slaughtering the first chap we meet of the name of Jones--there are such a lot of them about, you know."
Archie Beaupré came across to me. He was among the last to arrive. He also had been drinking. But liquor did not affect him as it did Teddy Hibbard. He never lost his equilibrium. There never came a stammer into his speech. Nor, in Iago's sense, did it steal away his brains. When drink entered into Archie, the devil went with it. When he had drunk enough to stupefy an ordinary man, he was very near to genius. In that condition I have known him write lines which no poet need be ashamed to own; and I have known him do things which must have set all the imps of Satan chuckling.
As he advanced to me, a casual acquaintance might not have supposed that he had been exceeding in the slightest degree. But I knew better. I knew it by something that was in his face, and in his eyes; by the ring that was in his voice, when he spoke; by the very way in which he clasped me by the hand.
"Here's luck!" he said--"I'm with you all the way."
CHAPTER XVI.
[DRAWING THE LOT.]
When we had taken our places, Pendarvon commenced proceedings. He looked round at us and laughed, as if the whole proceedings had been some mighty joke.
"Gentlemen, the usual preliminaries, if you please."