"Scotch, cold. Who was that you were talking to just now?"
Mr. Paxton shot at the stranger a keen, inquisitorial glance.
"What do you mean?"
"Weren't you talking to somebody as I came in?--two men, weren't there?"
"Oh yes! One of them I never met in my life before, and I never want to meet again. The other, the younger, I was introduced to yesterday."
"The younger--what's his name?"
"Lawrence. Do you know him?"
The stranger appeared not to notice the second hurried, almost anxious look which Mr. Paxton cast in his direction.
"I fancied I did. But I don't know any one of the name of Lawrence. I must have been wrong."
Mr. Paxton applied himself to his glass. It appeared, he told himself, that he was in bad luck's way. Only one person could have been more unwelcome just at the moment than Mr. Lawrence had been, and that person had actually followed hard on Mr. Lawrence's heels. As is the way with men of his class, who frequent the highways and the byways of great cities, Mr. Paxton had a very miscellaneous acquaintance. Among them were not a few officers of police. He had rather prided himself on this fact--as men of his sort are apt to do. But now he almost wished that he had never been conscious that such a thing as a policeman existed in the world; for there--at the moment when he was least wanted--standing at his side, was one of the most famous of London detectives; a man who was high in the confidence of the dignitaries at the "Yard"; a man, too, with whom he had had one or two familiar passages, and whom he could certainly not treat with the same stand-off air with which he had treated Mr. Lawrence.