I did mean it, and so I told him. What with having had nothing to eat, and being tired, and worried, and cold, it was all I could do to drag one foot after another. I just felt as if I was going to be ill. I could have kept on crying all the time.
“Have either of you got any money?” asked Tom. Neither Emily nor I had a penny. “Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do; we’ll all three of us go into Firandolo’s, and I’ll stand Sam.”
I knew he had only enough money to take him home on Sunday, because he had told me so himself the day before. Cardew & Slaughter’s is not the sort of place where they encourage you to spend Sunday in. He had been in last Sunday; and to stop in two Sundays running was to get yourself disliked; I have spent many a Sunday, loitering about the parks and the streets, living on a couple of buns, rather than go in to what they called dinner. And I knew that if we once set foot in Firandolo’s we should spend all he had. Yet I was so faint and hungry that I did not want much pressing. I could not find it in my heart to refuse.
Firandolo’s is something like a restaurant. Including vegetables, and sweets, and cheese, I have counted sixty-seven dishes on the bill of fare at one time, so that you have plenty of choice. For a shilling you can get a perfectly splendid dinner. And for sixpence you can get soup, and bread and cheese and butter; and they bring you the soup in a silver basin which is full to the brim.
At night it is generally crowded, but it was perhaps because the weather was so bad that there were only a few persons in the place when we went in. Directly after we entered someone else came in. He was a big man, and wore a reefer coat and a bowler hat. Seating himself at a table immediately opposite ours, taking off his hat, he wiped his forehead with an old bandanna handkerchief; though what there was to make him warm on a night like that was more than I could say. He had a fringe of iron-grey hair all round his head on a level with his ears. It stood out stiffly, like a sort of crown. Above and below it he was bald. He wore a bristly moustache, and his eyes were almost hidden by the bushiest eyebrows I had ever seen. I could not help noticing him, because I had a kind of fancy that he had been following us for some time. Unless I was mistaken he had passed me just as I had come out of Cardew & Slaughter’s; and ever since, whenever I looked round, I saw him somewhere behind us, as if he were keeping us in sight. I said nothing about it to the others, but I wondered, all the same. I did not like his looks at all. He seemed to me to be both sly and impudent; and though he pretended not to be watching us, I do not believe he took his eyes off us for a single moment.
I do not know what he had; he took a long time in choosing it, whatever it was. We had soup. It was lovely. Hot and tasty; just the very thing I wanted. It made me feel simply pounds better. But, after we had finished, something dreadful happened. The bill came altogether to one and three; we each of us had an extra bread. Tom felt in his pocket for the money. First in one, then in another. Emily and I soon saw that something was wrong, because he felt in every pocket he had. And he looked so queer.
“This is a bit of all right!” he gasped, just as we were beginning to wonder if he was all pockets. “Blessed if I have a single copper on me. I remember now that I left it in my box, so that I shouldn’t spend it.”
He looked at us, and we looked at him, and the waiter stood close by, looking at us all. And behind him was the proprietor, also with an observant eye. Emily and I were dumbfounded. Tom seemed as if he had not another word to say. Just as the proprietor was beginning to come closer, the stranger who had been following us got up and came to us across the room, all the time keeping his eyes on me.
“Pardon me if I take a liberty, but might I ask if I’m speaking to Miss Blyth?”
An odd voice he had; as if he were endeavouring to overcome its natural huskiness by speaking in a whisper. Of course my name is Blyth, and so I told him. But who he was I did not know from Adam. I certainly had never set eyes on him before. He explained, in a fashion; though his explanation came to nothing, after all.