Loe raamatut: «Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2», lehekülg 27

CHAPTER XXXIII. “GROG” IN COUNCIL

“What dreary little streets are those that lead from the Strand towards the Thames! Pinched, frail, semi-genteel, and many-lodgered are the houses, mysteriously indicative of a variously occupied population, and painfully suggesting, by the surging conflict of busy life at one end, and the dark flowing river at the other, an existence maintained between struggle and suicide.” This, most valued reader, if no reflection of mine, but was the thought that occupied the mind of one who, in not the very best of humors, and of a wet and dreary night, knocked, in succession, at half the doors in the street in search after an acquaintance.

“Yes, sir, the second back,” said a sleepy maid-servant at last; “he is just come in.”

“All right,” said the stranger. “Take that carpet-bag and writing-desk upstairs to his room, and say that Captain Davis is coming after them.’”

“You owe me a tip, Captain,” said the cabman, catching the name as he was about to mount his box. “Do you remember the morning I drove you down to Blackwall to catch the Antwerp boat, I went over Mr. Moss, the sheriff’s officer, and smashed his ankle, and may I never taste bitters again if I got a farthing for it.”

“I remember,” said Davis, curtly. “Here’s a crown. I ‘d have made it a sovereign if it had been his neck you ‘d gone over.”

“Better luck next time, sir, and thank you,” said the man, as he drove away.

The maid was yet knocking for admission when Grog arrived at the door. “Captain Fisk, sir, – Captain Fisk, there ‘s a gent as says – ”

“That will do,” said Davis, taking the key from her hand and opening the door for himself.

“Old Grog himself, as I’m a living man!” cried a tall, much whiskered and moustached fellow, who was reading a “Bell’s Life” at the fire.

“Ay, Master Fisk, – no other,” said Davis, as he shook his friend cordially by the hand. “I ‘ve had precious work to find you out I was up at Duke Street, then they sent me to the Adelphi; after that I tried Ling’s, in the Hay-market, and it was a waiter there – ”

“Joe,” broke in the other.

“Exactly. Joe told me that I might chance upon you here.”

“Well, I ‘m glad to see you, old fellow, and have a chat about long ago,” said Fisk, as he placed a square green bottle and some glasses on the table. How well you ‘re looking, too; not an hour older than when I saw you four years ago!”

“Ain’t I, though!” muttered Grog. “Ay, and like the racers, I ‘ve got weight for age, besides. I’m a stone and a half heavier than I ought to be, and there’s nothing worse than that to a fellow that wants to work with his head and sleep with one eye open.”

“You can’t complain much on that score, Kit; you never made so grand a stroke in your life as that last one, – the marriage, I mean.”

“It was n’t bad,” said Davis, as he mixed his liquor; “nor was it, exactly, the kind of hazard that every man could make. Beecher was a troublesome one, – a rare troublesome one; nobody could ever say when he ‘d run straight.”

“I always thought him rotten,” said the other, angrily.

“Well, he is and he isn’t,” said Grog, deliberately.

“He has got no pluck,” said Fisk, indignantly.

“He has quite enough.”

“Enough – enough for what?”

“Enough for a lord. Look here, Master Fisk, so long as you have not to gain your living by anything, it is quite sufficient if you can do it moderately well. Many a first-rate amateur there is, who wouldn’t be thought a tenth-rate artist.”

“I ‘d like to know where you had been to-day if it was n’t for your pluck,” said Fisk, doggedly.

“In a merchant’s office in the City, belike, on a hundred and twenty pounds a year; a land steward down in Dorsetshire, at half the salary; skipper of a collier from North Shields, or an overseer in Jamaica. These are the high prizes for such as you and me; and the droll part of the matter is, they will talk of us as ‘such lucky dogs,’ whenever we attain to one of these brilliant successes. Gazette my son-in-law as Ambassador to Moscow, and nobody thinks it strange; announce, in the same paper, that Kit Davis has been made a gauger, and five hundred open mouths exclaim, ‘How did he obtain that? Who the deuce got it for him? Does n’t he fall on his legs!’ and so on.”

“I suppose we shall have our turn one of these days,” muttered the other, sulkily.

“I hope not. I ‘d rather have things as they are,” said Grog, gravely.

“Things as they are! And why so, I ‘d wish to ask?”

“Look at it this way, Tom Fisk,” said Grog, squaring his arms on the table and talking with slow deliberation; “if you were going to cut into a round game, wouldn’t you rather take a hand where the players were all soft ones, with plenty of cash, or would you prefer sitting down with a set of downy coves, all up to every dodge, and not a copper farthing in the company? Well, that’s exactly what the world would be if the Manchester fellows had their way; that’s exactly what it is, this very hour we ‘re sitting here, in America. There’s nobody on the square there. President, judges, editors, Congressmen, governors, are all rogues; and they’ve come to that pass, that any fellow with a dash of spirit about him must come over to Europe to gain his livelihood. I have it from their own lips what I ‘m telling you, for I was a-thinking about going over there myself; but they said, ‘Don’t go, sir,’ – they always say ‘sir,’ – ‘don’t go, sir. Our Western fellows are very wide awake; for every trump you ‘d have up your sleeve, they ‘d have two in their boots!’”

“For my own part,” said Fisk, “I ‘d not go live amongst them if you ‘d make me Minister at Washington, and so I told Simmy Hankes this morning, when he came in such high feather about his appointment as consul – I forget where to.”

“Hankes – Hankes! The same fellow that used to be with Robins?”

“Just so; and for some years back Davenport Dunn managing man.”

Grog gave a very slight start, and then asked, carelessly, why he was leaving Dunn’s employment.

“Dunn’s going to shut up shop. Dunn is to be a peer, next week, and retires from business. He is to be in Tuesday’s ‘Gazette,’ so Hankes tells me.”

“He has done the thing well, I suppose?” said Davis, coolly.

“Hankes says something like two millions sterling. Pretty well for a fellow that started without a sixpence.”

“I wonder he could n’t have done something better for Hankes than that paltry place.”

“So he might, and so he would; but you see, Simmy did n’t like waiting. He’s a close fellow, and one can’t get much out of him; but I can perceive that he was anxious to get off the coach.”

“Did n’t like the pace, – didn’t trust the tackle overmuch,” said Grog, carelessly.

“Something of that kind, I ‘ve no doubt,” rejoined Fisk.

“Have you any pull over this same Hankes, Tom?” said Grog, confidentially.

“Well, I can’t say I have. We were pals together long ago; we did a little in the racing line, – in a very small way, of course. Then he used to have a roulette-table at Doncaster; but somehow there was no ‘go’ in him: he was over-cautious, and always saying, ‘I ‘d rather take to “business;”’ and as I hated business, we separated.”

“It’s odd enough that I can’t remember the fellow. I thought I knew every one that was on the ‘lay’ these five-and-thirty years.”

“He wasn’t Hankes at the time I speak of; he was a Jew at that period, and went by the name of Simeon.”

“Simeon, Simeon, – not the fellow that used to come down to Windsor, with the Hexquite Habannar cigars?”

And Grog mimicked not alone the voice, but the face of the individual alluded to, till Fisk burst into a roar of laughter.

“That’s Simmy, – that’s the man,” cried Fisk, as he dried his eyes.

“Don’t I know him! I had a class at that time, – young fellows in the Blues. I used to give them lessons in billiards; and Simmy, as you call him, discounted for the mess on a sliding scale, – ten per cent for the Major, and sixty for cornets the first year they joined. He was good fun, Simmy; he fancied he would have been a first-rate actor, and used to give scenes out of ‘Othello,’ in Kean’s manner: that was the only soft thing about him, and many a fellow got a bill done by applauding ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’!” And Grog gave a low growling sort of a laugh at his reminiscences.

“You ‘ll see him to-morrow; he’s to breakfast here,” said Fisk, rather amused at the prospect of a recognition between such men.

“He would never play ‘Shylock,’” continued Grog, following out his reminiscences, “though we all told him he ‘d make a great hit in the part. The Jew, you see, – the Jew couldn’t stand that. And so Mr. Simmy Hankes is no other than Simeon! It was an old theory of mine, whenever I saw a fellow doing wonderfully well in the world, without any help from friends or family, to fancy that one time or other he must have belonged to what they are so fond of calling ‘the Hebrew persuasion’!”

“I wouldn’t rake up old memories with him, Grog, if I were you,” said Fisk, coaxingly.

“It ain’t my way, Tom Fisk,” said Davis, curtly.

“He ‘ll be at his ease at once when he perceives that you don’t intend to rip up old scores; and he ‘ll be just as delicate with you.”

“Delicate with me?” cried Grog, bursting out into a fit of immoderate laughter. “Well, if that ain’t a good one! I wonder what he is! Do you imagine Fitzroy Kelly is ashamed of being thought a lawyer, or Brodie of being a surgeon? You must be precious soft, my worthy friend, if you suppose that I don’t know what the world thinks and says of me. No, no, there’s no need of what you call delicacy at all. You used to be made of other stuff than this, Tom Fisk. It’s keeping company with them snobs of half-pay officers, clerks in the Treasury, and Press reporters-has spoiled you; the demi-gents of the ‘Garottaman Club’ have ruined hundreds.”

“The Garottaman is one of the first clubs in town,” broke in Fisk.

“You ‘re too much like sailors on a raft for my fancy,” said Grog, dryly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just that you are hungry and have got nothing to eat, – you ‘re eternally casting lots who is to be devoured next! But we ‘ll not fall out about that. I ‘ve been turning over in my head about this Simmy Hankes, and I ‘d like to have an hour in his company, all alone. Could you manage to be out of the way to-morrow morning and leave me to entertain him at breakfast?”

“It will suit my book to a trivet, for I want to go over to Barnes to look after a yearling I ‘ve got there, and you can tell Hankes that the colt was taken suddenly ill.”

“He ‘ll not be very curious about the cause of your absence,” said Grog, dryly. “The pleasure of seeing me so unexpectedly will put everything else out of his head.” A grim smile showed the spirit in which he spoke these words.

It was now very late, and Davis threw himself on a sofa, with his great-coat over him, and, wishing his friend a goodnight, was soon sound asleep; nor did he awake till aroused by the maid-servant getting the room into readiness and arranging the table for breakfast. Then, indeed, Grog arose and made his toilet for the day, – not a very elaborate nor a very elegant one, but still a disguise such as the most practised detective could not have penetrated, and yet removable in a moment, so that he might, by merely taking off eyebrows and moustaches, become himself at once.

Having given orders that the gentleman he expected should be shown in on his arrival, Grog solaced himself at the fire with a morning paper, in all the ease of slippers and an arm-chair. Almost the first thing that struck his eye was a paragraph informing the world that the marriage of a distinguished individual – whose approaching elevation to the peerage had been already announced – with one of the most beautiful daughters of the aristocracy would take place early in the ensuing week. And then, like a codicil to a will, followed a brilliant description of the gold dressing-case ordered by Mr. Davenport Dunn, at Storr’s, for his bride. He was yet occupied with the paragraph when Mr. Hankes entered the room.

“I am afraid I have made a mistake,” said that bland gentleman. “I thought this was Captain Fisk’s apartment.”

“You’re all right,” said Grog, leisurely surveying the visitor, whose “get up” was really splendid. Amethyst studs glittered on his shirt; his ample chest seemed a shrine in its display of amulets and charmed offerings, while a massive chain crossed and recrossed him so frequently that he appeared to be held together by its coils. Fur and velvet, too, abounded in his costume; and even to the immense “gland” that depended from his cane, there was an amount of costliness that bespoke affluence.

“I regret, sir,” began Hankes, pompously, “that I have not the honor – ”

“Yes, yes; you have the honor,” broke in Grog. “You’ve had it this many a year. Sit down here. I don’t wear exactly so well as you, but you ‘ll remember me presently. I ‘m Kit Davis, man. You don’t require me to say who you are.”

“Davis, – Grog Davis,” muttered Hankes to himself, while an ashy paleness spread over his face.

“You don’t look overjoyed to meet with an old friend,” said Grog, with a peculiar grin; “but you ought, man. There’s no friendships like early ones. The fellows who knew us in our first scrapes are always more lenient to our last wickednesses.”

“Captain Davis, – Captain Davis!” stammered out Hankes, “this is indeed an unexpected pleasure!”

“So much so that you can hardly get accustomed to it,” said Grog, with another grin. “Fisk received a hasty message that called him away to the country this morning, and left me to fill his place; and I, as you may guess, was little loath to have a cosey chat with an old friend that I have not seen – how many years is it?”

“It must be nigh ten, or even twelve!”

“Say, seven or eight and twenty, man, and you ‘ll be nigher the mark. Let me see,” said he, trying to remember, “the last time I saw you was at Exeter. You were waiting for your trial about those bills of George Colborne. Don’t look so frightened; there’s no one to hear us here. It was as narrow an escape there as ever man had. It was after that, I suppose, you took the name of Hankes?”

“Yes,” said the other, in a faint whisper.

“Well, I must say Christianity does n’t seem to have disagreed with you. You ‘re in capital case, – a little pluffy for work, but in rare health, and sleek as a beaver.”

“Always the same. He will have his joke,” muttered Hankes, as though addressing some third party to the colloquy.

“I can’t say that I have committed any excesses in that line of late,” said Grog, dryly. “I ‘ve had rather a tough fight with the world!”

“But you’ve fought it well, and successfully,” Davis said the other, with confidence. “Have n’t you married your daughter to a Viscount?”

“Who told you that? Who knows it here?” cried Grog, hurriedly.

“I heard it from Fordyce’s people a fortnight ago. It was I myself brought the first news of it to Davenport Dunn.”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t say much; he wondered a little how it came about; hinted that you must be an uncommon clever fellow, for it was a great stroke, if all should come right.”

“You mean about the disputed claim to the title?”

“Yes.”

“He has his doubts about that, then, has he?”

“He has n’t much doubt on the subject, for it lies with himself to decide the matter either way. If he likes to produce certain papers, Conway’s claim is as good as established. You are aware that they have already gained two of their actions on ejectment; but Dunn could save them a world of time and labor, and that’s why he’s coming up to-morrow. Fordyce is to meet him at Calvert’s Hotel, and they ‘re to go into the entire question.”

“What are his terms? How much does he ask?” said Grog, bluntly.

“I can’t possibly say; I can only suspect.”

“What do you suspect, then?”

“Well,” said Hankes, drawing a long breath, “my impression is that if he decide for the present Viscount, he ‘ll insist upon an assignment of the whole Irish property in his favor.”

“Two thousand a year, landed property!” exclaimed Grog.

“Two thousand eight hundred, and well paid,” said Hankes, coolly; “but that is not all.”

“Not all! what do you mean?”

“Why, there’s another hitch. But what am I saying?” cried he, in terror. “I don’t believe that I’d speak of these things on my death-bed.”

“Be frank and open with me, Simeon. I am a true pal to the man that trusts me, and the very devil to him that plays me false.”

“I know it,” said the other, gloomily.

“Well, now for that other hitch, as you called it What is it?”

“It’s about an estate that was sold under the ‘Encumbered Court,’ and bought by the late Lord Lackington – at least in his name – and then resold at a profit – ” Here he stopped, and seemed as though he had already gone too far.

“I understand,” broke in Grog; “the purchase-money was never placed to the Viscount’s credit, and your friend Dunn wants an acquittance in full of the claim.”

“You’ve hit it!”

“What’s the figure, – how much?”

“Thirty-seven thousand six hundred pounds.”

“He ‘s no retail-dealer, this same Davenport Dunn,” said Grog, with a grin; “that much I will say of him.”

“He has a wonderful head,” said Hankes, admiringly.

“I ‘ll agree with you, if it save his neck!” said Davis-, and then added, after a moment, “He’s bringing up all these documents and papers with him, you said?”

“Yes; he intends to make some settlement or other of the matter before he marries. After that he bids farewell to business forever.”

“He’ll go abroad, I suppose?” said Davis, not attaching any strong signification to his remark; but suddenly perceiving an expression of anxiety in Hankes’s face, he said, “Mayhap it were all as well; he’d be out of the way for a year or so!”

The other nodded an assent.

“He has ‘realized’ largely, I take it?”

Another nod.

“Foreign funds and railways, eh?”

“Not railways, – no, scrip!” said Hankes, curtly.

“Won’t there be a Jolly smash!” said Davis, with a bitter laugh. “I take it there’s not been any one has ‘done the trick’ these fifty years like this fellow.”

“I suspect you ‘re right there,” murmured Hankes.

“I have never seen him but once, and then only for a few minutes, but I read him like a printed book. He had put on the grand integrity and British-mercantile-honesty frown to scowl me down, to remind Davis, ‘the leg,’ that he was in the presence of Dunn, the Unimpeachable, but I put one eye a little aslant, this way, and I just said, ‘Round the corner, old fellow, – round the corner!’ Oh, didn’t he look what the Yankees call ‘mean ugly’!”

“He ‘ll never forget it to you, that’s certain.”

“If he did, I ‘d try and brush up his memory a bit,” said Davis, curtly. “He must be a rare sharp one,” added he, after a pause.

“The cleverest man in England, I don’t care who the other is,” cried Hankes, with enthusiasm. “When the crash comes, – it will be in less than a month from this day, – the world will discover that they’re done to the tune of between three and four millions sterling, and I defy the best accountant that ever stepped to trace out where the frauds originated, – whether it was the Railways smashed the Mines, the Mines that ruined the Great Ossory, the Great Ossory that dipped the Drainage, or the Drainage that swamped the Glengariff, not to speak of all the incidental confusion about estates never paid for, and sums advanced on mock mortgage, together, with cancelled scrip reissued, preference shares circulated before the current ones, and dock warrants for goods that never existed. And that ain’t all” continued Hankes, to whom the attentive eagerness of Grog’s manner vouched for the interest his narrative excited, – “that ain’t all; but there isn’t a class nor condition in life, from the peer to the poorest laboring-man, that he has n’t in some way involved in his rogueries, and made him almost a partner in the success. Each speculation being dependent for its solvency on the ruin of some other, Ossory will hate Glengariff, Drainage detest Mines, Railways curse Patent Fuel, and so on. I ‘ll give the Equity Court and the Bankrupt Commissioners fifty years and they’ll not wind up the concern.”

Grog rubbed his hands gleefully, and laughed aloud.

“Then all the people that will be compromised!” said Hankes; “Glumthal himself is not too clean-handed; lords and fine ladies that lent their names to this or that company, chairmen of committees in the House that did n’t disdain to accept five hundred or a thousand shares as a mark of grateful recognition for pushing a bill through its second reading; ay, and great mercantile houses that discounted freely on forged acceptances, owning that they thought the best of all security was the sight of a convict-hulk and a felon’s jacket, and that no man was such prompt pay as he that took a loan of a friend’s signature. What a knockdown blow for all that lath-and-plaster edifice we dignify by the name of Credit, when the world sees that it is a loaf the rogue can take a slice out of as well as the honest man!”

“Won’t we have stunning leaders in the ‘Times’ about it!” cried Grog. “It will go deuced hard with the Ministry that have made this fellow a peer.”

“Yes, they’ll have to go out,” said Hanked, gravely; “a cabinet may defend a bad measure, – they ‘ll never fight for a bad man.”

“And they can’t hang this fellow?” said Grog, after a pause.

“Hang! I should think not, indeed.”

“Nor even transport him?”

“No, not touch a hair of his head. He’ll have to live abroad for a year or two, – in Paris or Rome, – no great hardship if it were Naples; he ‘ll make a surrender of his property, – an old house somewhere and some brick-fields, a mine of Daryamon coal, and a flax-mill on a river that has scarcely any water, together with a sheaf of bad bills and Guatemala bonds. They ‘ll want to examine him before the Court, and he’ll send them a sick-certificate, showing how agitation and his recent losses have almost made him imbecile; and even Mr. Linklater will talk feelingly about his great reverse of condition.”

“It’s as good as a play to hear about this,” said Grog; “it beats Newmarket all to sticks.”

“If it’s a play, it won’t be a benefit to a good many folk,” said Hankes, grinning.

“Well, he is a clever fellow, – far and away cleverer than I ever thought him,” said Grog. “Any man – I don’t care who he is – can do the world to a short extent, but to go in at them on this scale a fellow must be a genius.”

“He is a genius,” said Hankes, in a tone of decision. “Just think for a moment what a head it must have been that kept all that machinery at work for years back without a flaw or a crack to be detected, started companies, opened banks, worked mines, railroads, and telegraphs, built refuge harbors, drained whole counties, brought vast tracts of waste land into cultivation, equalizing the chances of all enterprises by making the success of this come to the aid of the failure of that: the grand secret of the whole being the dexterous application of what is called ‘Credit.’”

“All that wouldn’t do at Doncaster,” said Grog; “puff your horse as much as you like, back him up how you will in the betting-ring, if he has n’t the speed in him it won’t do. It’s only on ‘Change you can ‘brag out of a bad hand.’ Dunn would never cut any figure on the turf.”

“There you are all wrong; there never yet was the place, or the station, where that man would n’t have distinguished himself. Why, it was that marvellous power of his kept me with him for years back. I knew all that was going on. I knew that we hadn’t – so to say – coals for one boiler while we had forty engines in full stroke; but I could n’t get away. It was a sort of fascination; and when he ‘d strike out a new scheme, and say carelessly, ‘Call the capital one million, Hankes,’ he spoke like a man that had only to put his hand in a bag and produce the money. Nothing daunted, nothing deterred him. He’d smash a rival company as coolly as you ‘d crush a shell under your heel, and he ‘d turn out a Government with the same indifference he ‘d discharge a footman.”

“Well,” grumbled out Grog, at last, for he was getting irritable at the exaggerated estimate Hankes formed of his chief, “what has it all come to? Ain’t he smashed at last?”

“He smashed!” cried Hankes, in derision. “He smashed! You are smashed! I am smashed! any one else you like is smashed, but he is not! Mind my words, Davis, Davenport Dunn will be back here, in London, before two years are over, with the grandest house and the finest retinue in town. His dinners will be the best, and his balls the most splendid of the season. No club will rival his cook, no equipage beat his in the Park. When he rises in the Lords, – which he ‘ll do only seldom, – there will be a most courteous attention to his words; and, above all, you’ll never read one disparaging word about him in the papers. I give him two years, but it’s just as likely he ‘ll do it in less.”

“It may be all as you say,” said Grog, sullenly, “though I won’t say I believe it myself; but, at all events, it does n’t help me on my way to my own business with him. I want these papers of Lackington’s out of his hands! He may ‘walk into’ the whole world, for all that I care: but I want to secure my daughter as the Viscountess, – that’s how it stands.”

“How much ready money can you command? What sum can you lay your hand on?”

Grog drew his much-worn pocket-book from his breast, and, opening the leaves, began to count to himself.

“Something like fifty-seven pounds odd shillings,” said he, with a grin.

“If you could have said twelve or fourteen thousand down, it might be nearer the mark. Conway’s people are ready with about ten thousand.”

“How do you know?” asked Grog, savagely.

“Dunn told me as much. But he does n’t like to treat with them, because the difficulty about the Irish estate would still remain unsettled.”

“Then what am I to do? How shall I act?” asked Grog.

“It’s not an easy matter to advise upon,” said Hankes, thoughtfully, “for Dunn holds to one maxim with invariable tenacity, which is never to open any negotiation with a stranger which cannot be completed in one interview. If you couldn’t begin by showing the bank-notes, he’d not discuss the question at all.”

Grog arose and walked the room with hasty steps: he tried to seem calm, but in the impatient gesture with which he threw his cigar into the fire might be read the agitation he could not conquer nor conceal.

“What could you yourself do with him, Hankes?” said he, at last.

“Nothing, – absolutely nothing,” said the other. “He never in his life permitted a subordinate to treat, except on his own behalf; that was a fixed law with him.”

“Curse the fellow!” burst out Davis, “he made rules and laws as if the world was all his own.”

“Well, he managed to have it pretty much his own way, it must be confessed,” said Hankes, with a half-smile.

“He is to be in town to-morrow, you said,” muttered Grog, half aloud. “Where does he stop?”

“This time it will be at Calvert’s, Upper Brook Street. His house in Piccadilly is ready, but he ‘ll not go there at present.”

“He makes a mystery of everything, so far as I can see,” said Grog, angrily. “He comes up by the express-train, does n’t he?” grumbled he, after a pause.

“If he has n’t a special engine,” said Hankes. “He always, however, has his own coupé furnished and fitted up for himself and never, by any chance, given to any one else. There ‘s a capital bed in it, and a desk, where he writes generally the whole night through, and a small cooking-apparatus, where he makes his coffee, so that no servant ever interrupts him at his work. Indeed, except from some interruption, or accident on the line, the guard would not dare to open his door. Of course his orders are very strictly obeyed. I remember one night Lord Jedburg sent in his name, and Dunn returned for answer, ‘I can’t see him.’”

“And did the Prime Minister put up with that?” asked Davis.

“What could he do?” said the other, with a shrug of the shoulder.

“If I were Lord Jedburg, I’d have unkennelled him, I promise you that, Simmy. But here, it’s nigh twelve o’clock, and I have a mass of things to do. I say, Hankes, could you contrive to look in here to-morrow evening, after nightfall? I may have something to tell you.”

“We were strictly confidential, – all on honor, this morning, Kit,” said the other, whispering.

“I think you know me, Mister Simmy,” was all Grog’s reply. “I don’t think my worst enemy could say that I ever ‘split’ on the fellow that trusted me.”

A hearty shake-hands followed, and they parted.