The individual, who was in perfect good-humour, did not appear to hear one word which Policeman X uttered, but nodded and waggled his grinning head at Strong, until his hat almost fell from his head over the area railings.
“Now, sir, move on, do you hear?” cries X, in a much more peremptory tone, and he touched the stranger gently with one of the fingers enclosed in the gauntlets of the Berlin woof.
He of the many rings instantly started, or rather staggered back, into what is called an attitude of self-defence, and in that position began the operation which is entitled ‘squaring’ at Policeman X, and showed himself brave and warlike, if unsteady. “Hullo! keep your hands off a gentleman,” he said, with an oath which need not be repeated.
“Move on out of this,” said X, “and don’t be a blocking up the pavement, staring into gentlemen’s dining-rooms.”
“Not stare—ho, ho,—not stare—that is a good one,” replied the other with a satiric laugh and sneer—“Who’s to prevent me from staring, looking at my friends, if I like? not you, old highlows.”
“Friends! I dessay. Move on,” answered X.
“If you touch me, I’ll pitch into you, I will,” roared the other. “I tell you I know ’em all—That’s Sir Francis Clavering, Baronet, M.P.—I know him, and he knows me—and that’s Strong, and that’s the young chap that made the row at the ball. I say, Strong, Strong!”
“It’s that d—— Altamont,” cried Sir Francis within, with a start and a guilty look; and Strong also, with a look of annoyance, got up from the table, and ran out to the intruder.
A gentleman in a white waistcoat, running out from a dining-room bareheaded, a policeman, and an individual decently attired, engaged in almost fisticuffs on the pavement, were enough to make a crowd, even in that quiet neighbourhood, at half-past eight o’clock in the evening, and a small mob began to assemble before Sir Francis Clavering’s door. “For God’s sake, come in,” Strong said, seizing his acquaintance’s arm. “Send for a cab, James, if you please,” he added in an under voice to that domestic; and carrying the excited gentleman out of the street, the outer door was closed upon him, and the small crowd began to move away.
Mr. Strong had intended to convey the stranger into Sir Francis’s private sitting-room, where the hats of the male guests were awaiting them, and having there soothed his friend by bland conversation, to have carried him off as soon as the cab arrived—but the new-comer was in a great state of wrath at the indignity which had been put upon him; and when Strong would have led him into the second door, said in a tipsy voice, “That ain’t the door—that’s the dining-room door—where the drink’s going on—and I’ll go and have some, by Jove; I’ll go and have some.” At this audacity the butler stood aghast in the hall, and placed himself before the door: but it opened behind him, and the master of the house made his appearance, with anxious looks.