“Have you a gun?”
“Sure!” replied Jim, “and one for you. Here!––stick it in your pocket now. It is loaded. Darned handy thing!”
Phil walked part of the way up the back streets with Jim.
It was noisy as usual round Chinatown, with its squeaky fiddle, tom-tom and cocoanut-shell orchestras, 160 intensified by a fire-cracker display on the part of the more aristocratic Chinese in honour of John Royce Pederstone’s victory. The remainder of the town, apart from the neighbourhood of the dance-hall, was in absolute quietness.
Phil parted from Jim near the railway tracks and slowly retraced his steps toward the town hall, whose blaze of lights stood out in high contrast with the surrounding darkness.
When Phil got back, the band had just concluded a cheery two-step and the dancers were scattering in all directions for seats round the hall and for the buffet.
Eileen Pederstone caught sight of him as soon as he entered, and signalled him over.
“I thought you had gone home, Mr. Ralston,” she remarked, her eyes sparkling with enjoyment and her breath coming fast with the exertion of the dance.
Phil took in her slender, shapely, elfin beauty, and his heart beat a merry riot of pleasure as he sat down by her side.
“I went along the road a bit with Jim,” he answered. “He had some business he wished to see to.”