He looked at me over his pince-nez, and said at twelve. Then he flipped his pince-nez off, smiled, and, giving me a friendly look, politely observed he believed he and I were members of the same distinguished club, the Mausolœum. He dared say I hadn’t forgotten dining next him there in the autumn, and the interesting talk we had then had.
“Aye, aye, aye,” I mumbled, in my fright, a mixture of Punch and Pantaloon.
He had seen me walking about before, he went on (what on earth did he mean by that, I wondered), and had meant to take the liberty of speaking to me. What I had said in the autumn had interested and impressed him very much, and he had often thought over it. Then he folded up his paper, and evidently began to lay himself out for a renewal of our supposed conversation, a prospect which much alarmed and disconcerted me.
I scarcely liked to exercise the complete vigor of my youth and make an immediate bolt; for I had doddered up to the seat and, like an aged pensioner, sat me down with a loud sigh of relief—rather overacting, in fact; so, if I were to keep up the character, I must at least dodder away again when I left. Yet, however complimentary to my make-up, it was, just at present, a distinct nuisance to find myself mistaken for somebody else, and likely to be detained over a conversation which, under no circumstances, could ever have had the faintest interest for me.
To prevent that, I cautiously began:
“My servant tells me there was a robbery, or something of that sort, in the rooms last night.”
“Oh!” said my club comrade.
“Have you heard anything about it?”
“No, indeed.”
“The Casino authorities keep a thing of that sort pretty close, I imagine,” I cautiously ventured.