“It gave me a ‘jolt.’ Good word, that. But it would give you a bigger one, my dear fellow, if he was the man he looked like.”
“Why?” Tembarom asked laconically.
“He looked like Jem Temple Barholm.”
He saw Tembarom start. There could be no denying it.
“You thought that? Honest?” he said sharply, as if for a moment he had lost his head. “You thought that?”
“Don’t be nervous. Perhaps I couldn’t have sworn to it. I did not see him very close.”
T. Tembarom puffed rapidly at his pipe, and only ejaculated, “Oh!”
“Of course he’s dead. If he wasn’t,”—with a shrug of his shoulders,—“Lady Joan Fayre would be Lady Joan Temple Barholm, and the pair would be bringing up an interesting family here.” He looked about the room, and then, as if suddenly recalling the fact, added, “By George! you’d be selling newspapers, or making them—which was it?—in New York!”
It was by no means unpleasing to see that he had made his hit there. T. Tembarom swung about and walked across the room with a very perturbed expression.
“Say,” he put it to him, coming back, “are you in earnest, or are you just saying it to give me a jolt?”