“Damn your impudent speeches! Open the door!”
Captain O’Hagan pressed the bell.
The door opened so suddenly and violently as to precipitate Haverley forward into the room. He recovered himself, turned, and sprang with a cry upon Donohue.
(“Donohue,” O’Hagan has informed me, “is not of course an adept of the Higher Arts of Jiu-Jitsu; but he has a pleasing proficiency in the more ordinary holds and falls.”)
Donohue, then, met the attack in a novel way. He received Captain Haverley in a loving embrace. Then, like a teetotum, Haverley was spun right-about, and held, purple-faced, eyes starting hideously, with his arms locked behind him by the human manacle of Donohue’s iron grip.
Donohue: “Yes, sir?”
“You have your instructions, Donohue,” said O’Hagan—and passing the inarticulate Haverley, strode out of the room.
—————
V.
REVELATIONS.
“The worse a man’s reputation,” Bernard O’Hagan holds, “the more the women like him. In French comedy we find the jealous husband held up to ridicule—hence the superiority of the lover. Failing the sword, Ridicule, my boy, is the weapon to cut short the career of Gallantry.”