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The Tenants of Malory. Volume 3
The Tenants of Malory, Volume 3
CHAPTER I.
A LARK
"There's some 'Old Tom,' isn't there? Get it, and glasses and cold water, here," said Cleve to his servant, who, patient, polite, sleepy, awaited his master. "You used to like it – and here are cigars;" and he shook out a shower upon his drawing-room table cover. "And where did you want to go at this time of night?"
"To Wright's, to see the end of the great game of billiards – Seller and Culverin, you know; I've two pounds on it."
"I don't care if I go with you, just now. What's this? – When the devil did this come?" Cleve had picked up and at one pale glance read a little note that lay on the table; and then he repeated coolly enough —
"I say, when did this come?"
"Before one, sir, I think," said Shepperd.
"Get me my coat," and Shepperd disappeared.
"Pestered to death," he said, moodily. "See, you have got the things here, and cigars. I shan't be five minutes away. If I'm longer, don't wait for me; but finish this first."
Cleve had turned up the collar of his outer coat, and buttoned it across his chin, and pulled a sort of travelling cap down on his brows, and away he went, looking very pale and anxious.
He did not come back in five minutes; nor in ten, twenty, or forty minutes. The "Old Tom" in the bottle had run low; Sedley looked at his watch; he could wait no longer.
When he got out upon the flagway, he felt the agreeable stimulus of the curious "Old Tom" sufficiently to render a little pause expedient for the purpose of calling to mind with clearness the geographical bearings of Wright's billiard-rooms – whither accordingly he sauntered – eastward, along deserted and echoing streets, with here and there a policeman poking into an area, or loitering along his two-mile-an-hour duty march, and now and then regaled by the unearthly music of love-sick cats among the roofs.