One, a tall, thin, hard-faced man, who had been drinking a cocktail and chatting with the barmaid while awaiting his friend, turned as the other entered, and in his pronounced American accent exclaimed:
“Halloa, boy! Thought you weren’t coming. Say, you’re late.”
The other—dark, clean-shaven, with a broad brow, and rather good-looking—grasped his friend’s hand and ordered a drink. Then, tossing it off at one gulp, he walked with his friend into the adjoining smoking-room, where they could be alone.
“What’s up?” asked the newcomer, in a low, eager voice.
“Look here, Hoggan, my boy,” exclaimed the taller of the two to the newcomer, “I’m glad you’ve come along. I ’phoned you to your hotel at half-past ten, but you were out. It seems there’s trouble over that game of poker you played with those two boys in Knightsbridge last night. They’ve been to the police, so you’d better clear out at once.”
“The police!” echoed the other, his dark brows knit. “Awkward, isn’t it?”
“Very. You go, old chap. Get across the Channel as quick as ever you can, or I guess you’ll have some unwelcome visitors. Don’t go back to the hotel. Abandon your traps, and clear out right away.”
Silas P. Hoggan, the man with the broad brow, had no desire to make further acquaintance with the police. As a cosmopolitan adventurer he had lived for the past six years a life of remarkable experiences in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Rome. He posed as a financier, and had matured many schemes for public companies in all the capitals—companies formed to exploit all sorts of enterprises, all of which, however, had placed money in his pocket.
Two years before he had been worth thirty thousand pounds, the proceeds of various crooked businesses. At that moment he had been in San Francisco, when, by an unlucky mischance, a scheme of his had failed, ingenious as it was, and now he found himself living in an expensive hotel in London, with scarcely sufficient to settle his hotel bill.