“For your whole appearance is most distasteful to me,” concludes the Captain. “Good morning.”
(We proceed.)
A trembling voice which says something about “a letter from my solicitor,” reaches our ears, faintly.
“The solicitor again, Raymond!” laughs O’Hagan. “Never the friend to measure the length of one’s blade! Your knights of the pen make sorry cavaliers!”
I grant it. And the worst of my bad dreams is that wherein—unaccompanied by the magnificent and terrible O’Hagan—I encounter some of those whom he has browbeaten in my presence!
But, as I think I already have stated, O’Hagan sometimes is misunderstood.
At a certain club, of which O’Hagan is not a member, my friend was introduced to an American gentleman who proclaimed himself a press agent.
(“I like Americans—real, full-blooded, whole-hearted Americans,” O’Hagan has told me. “I can even appreciate how, in an American, commercial acumen and gentility may be wedded. My great grand-uncle, Edmond, distinguished himself, as you remember, in the Civil War.”
His great grand-uncle, Edmond, is a favourite source of anecdote; but the impression left upon my mind is that a more truculent, bloodthirsty swashbuckler never breathed God’s air.)
“I am very delighted to have met you, Captain O’Hagan,” said the press agent, whose name was Alex. Dewson. “I would like to put up a proposition right now!”