The next moment he laid a daintily-gloved hand on my shoulder, and, with an engaging smile, said, with the utmost good humour, “But surely a glass of lemonade or ginger-beer cannot do you any harm?”
There was a strange magnetism about the man which carried me away, and I meekly surrendered myself to his will.
“Let us turn up this street,” he said, suddenly. “I know a nice little quiet place where we can have a drink in comfort.”
I followed him. Strange as it may seem, I was for the time being incapable of resistance. Perhaps my new-found friend was a hypnotist, or something of the kind; if he did not actually possess occult powers, he certainly had the gift in a very marked degree of ingratiating himself with strangers.
As we walked along side by side he kept up a lively and interesting conversation, touching lightly upon a variety of subjects. He evidently possessed a well-stored mind, for his fund of knowledge and anecdote seemed almost inexhaustible.
I became so interested in what he was telling me—wonderful adventures he said he had had in South America, and a graphic description of how diamonds are found—that I did not notice where I was being led. All I know is that we traversed street after street, until at length the man whom I had offered to guide to Hope Street had taken me to a part of the city in which I never remember having previously been.
“’EXCUSE ME, SIR,’ HE SAID, WITH MUCH POLITENESS, AT THE SAME TIME SLIGHTLY RAISING HIS HAT, ‘BUT I BELIEVE THIS IS YOUR HANDKERCHIEF.’”
Then suddenly he halted in front of a most respectable-looking whisky shop—in England we call them public-houses—situated in a broad thoroughfare, busy with plenty of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. It did not strike me as being a particularly “quiet” place; in fact, whilst it may have been comfortable enough inside, its exterior surroundings were not likely to recommend it to those in search of solitude.
“Here we are, my young friend,” he said, with that smile which had now become almost irresistible to me.