He was telling the old lady all about his father, the colonel, and how he had fought through the Crimea without a scratch. Yes, he was in the army himself—at least, the auxiliary portion of it: the second line. He lived most of the year at Southport, when he wasn’t out with his regiment, or hunting and shooting with friends, and always came up to London for the Derby and stayed in Duke Street. He was very fond of a bit of racing, and, in fact, owned some race horses—or, rather, “a chaser”—
“A what, sir?” asked the old woman, who was listening to him with her mouth open.
“A chaser—a steeple-chaser, don’t you know—‘Tenderloin,’ which was entered for the Grand National, and would be sure to be heavily backed.”
No, he didn’t care much about gambling; a man didn’t get a fair run for his money at Monte Carlo, the bank reserved too many odds in their own favor; to say nothing, as I knew, of his being kept very short of pocket-money by the colonel. And then he was actually fool enough to say, with a self-satisfied laugh, that he’d a notion the right way to treat the bank was to raid it.
“Raid it, sir?” cried the old woman.
“Yes, certainly, raid it; go into the rooms with a pistol and shout ‘Hands up, everybody!’ and carry off all the money on board a yacht, and be off, full speed.” Did Mrs. Wingham know if it had ever been tried?
From that to confiding our whole plan would have been only one step; but just at that moment in came Mrs. Sellars and Miss Marter, the only two other English ladies in the hotel, and Teddy and Mrs. Wingham fell to talking in whispers.
Mrs. Sellars, who was a stout, comfortable-looking person, with a large nose, a high color, and an expansive figure, generally attired in a blouse and a green velveteen skirt, was given to walking up and down the reading-room, moaning in theatrical agony over the disquieting news from South Africa. If she didn’t get a letter from her husband in the morning, she didn’t know what she should do; it was weeks since she had heard from him; something told her he was dead—and so on. Every distressed turn she took brought her nearer the ramshackle piano; so at last Miss Marter, mainly to stop her (for old maids don’t take much interest in other women’s husbands, alive or dead), with some asperity remarked, “Sing us something, dear; it will calm you.”
Then she came to me and said, excitedly, “Do you mind if I bring down my little dog? I always ask, as people sometimes object. It is the dearest little dog, and always sits in my lap.”
Teddy gave a violent start when he heard me answer, and knew he was detected. He got up, and, pretending to hum, immediately left the room. I didn’t like to follow at once, as I felt inclined; it would look as though Mrs. Sellars’s threatened singing drove me away. But the moment she finished I meant to go and give the wind-bag a good blowing-up, and meantime went on with my letter.